WHY IS THE ‘STRATEGY’ WORD SO SCARY?

I rarely use the word ‘strategy’ on my website – I was coached that outside of the Corporates, it could quite easily put off clients that have developed the notion that they’re too hands-on, too operational to need something so grandiose.

If I suggest I can help them to develop an approach however, or a game plan, a program, or any number of other nouns that seem more manageable, digestible, and definitely far less expensive? As a rule, they’ll be much more open – some might even say relaxed!

For those of us outside of the big consultancy houses that don’t have lots of time to workshop hypotheticals and construct nine-box models, shaping a strategy is much more about defining where you want to be at a future place in time, articulating the criteria by which you’ll know you’ve been successful, then agreeing the core streams of activity that will take you there. That’s not to say it doesn’t require some effort to get everyone aligned on the same page – especially the first time you set about it – but the effort invested will produce the ideal cornerstone from which to develop your SMART objectives and detailed action plans, with clear timelines and defined measures of success.

Reviewed regularly and reset as necessary your strategy, even by any other name, will set the ‘guiding principles of how you’ll get to where you want to be and, more importantly,  provide the check-list against which you can prioritise your actions:

- If it supports your strategy, invest and do it

- If it doesn’t, why would you?