While execs overwhelmingly agree that strategy is critical, it's often hard to know how effective a strategy is until years later.
In this video, we'll get around this by looking at several elements of good strategy that are relevant no matter the size, industry, or age of an organization, to help build a best practice strategy on day 1. We'll give an overview of the key elements of "good strategy" from across industries, focusing on 3 categories: being outcome-oriented, being holistic, and being buy-in driven.
Presented by Kut Akdogan, Partner at Gaussian Holdings.
Across all the definitions from management consultancies, academia and business journals, strategy is defined. We can break the elements of good strategy into three buckets. Let's walk through what each of those means.
Firstly, a good strategy must be outcome oriented, so it must be rooted in outcomes, but itself must not be an outcome. Reaching 1,000,000 monthly active users is not a strategy. Next, it must be prioritized. It's as much what an organization does not do as what an organization does. It must be achievable and not wishful, and it must be able to be held accountable to. Otherwise, it will never be realized.
The second bucket is a good strategy must be holistic. It must be the best choice across all options. It must also be rigorously discovery-driven, incorporating internal and industry challenges and opportunities. Next, it must use uncertainty as an input, not as a caveat and an excuse. It must be built into the strategy. It must be continuous and relevant. Some would say agile. And it must separate ideation from prioritization. This is something that will come back to in a future video.
And in the last bucket, a good strategy must be buy-in driven. It must be traceable, logical and clear. It must be simple, cohesive and coherent. It must be communicable to employees. It must be derived from a consistent process. And lastly, it must make leadership uncomfortable but confident. Organizations that follow these best practices have successful strategies that consistently drive to outcomes, boost internal confidence, transparency and engagement, and thrive in the modern, uncertain world.
For more resources or services for establishing a best practice strategy process at your organization, contact us here or shoot us a note by email or on LinkedIn.
Many companies work with us to achieve the best practices and outcomes mentioned in this article. Our services focus on clients' most pressing opportunities and challenges, no matter the industry.
