Do You Have A Strategy?

Strategy is an interesting and critical concept and frankly, while everyone talks about it, I believe few have actually clearly and specifically defined their actual strategy in one or two sentences. What is the strategy you intend to deploy to reach your objectives? Out of strategy come tasks, specific line items that need to be accomplished to implement the strategy and then of course, there’s actual implementation, the precise doing of the thing. Sure, you open your business with an intent to sell a service or a product but that is not a strategy, that is the result you hope to achieve. How exactly are you going to achieve it?

You need to define the “how” with the specific tasks that follow being the line item details to support the implementation of a strategy. If you do not know how you are going to achieve your objectives, how can you expect to get there?

Here is a good example:

Through Internet marketing and direct business-to-business calling, we will market to a national audience and will demonstrate the clear need for our services, the benefits to the potential customer and the return on investment our clients will enjoy giving us a competitive advantage over local providers.

This is a precise statement of strategy, clearly stating exactly what their overall position is. Then, the very specific tasks to support and implement.

Figure out exactly what your strategy is and, more importantly, if you do not have one, create one and then implement it. You cannot guide your ship without a map and the strategy is your map.