5 Questions to Ask While Crafting Strategy

With the continued onslaught on the bottom line from forces like regulations, political instability, disruptive technology and changing customer expectations, gone are the days of long term planning – RIP Five year Plans!

Strategy & Planning needs agility and frequent revisions so that they are aligned to the market forces. Organisations can only grow by either staying ahead of the market or by creating a new market.

Organisations can only grow by either staying ahead of the market or by creating a new market

We can beat the market organically through superior internal processes resulting in lower costs or better and differentiated offerings. Inorganically, you have to find your partner with whom you can capitalize on the merger synergies.

Creating a new market is through innovation and the process is continuous because what’s innovation today is commonplace tomorrow, thanks to the dynamism in the market.

So, as executives and business leaders what are the some of the right questions to ask when it comes to strategy and planning.

1. Are the strategies adaptive and/or emergent?

Strategy will ultimately result in activities connected to our business models, products, customers and markets. So, being adaptive or emergent means our strategy should be either shock resistant or be shock absorbing and must be flexible enough to deliver opportunistic responses to unexpected events.

More on Adaptive Strategy

2. Are your strategies listening to your customer?

Strategies cannot be crafted in isolation. Strategy and operational planning needs to consider customer insights and expectations. Customer is the most important stakeholder in strategy formulation. Thus, strategies need to be more revenue generating and customer focused and less history driven.

3. Do the strategies align to the core competency?

An organisation's core competency rest with its people, processes and offerings. So, the leaders need to assess the core competencies correctly to devise an effectively aligned strategy and the operational plans. Core competency is the source of competitive advantage and sustainable strategic advantage. Business models are built around these core competencies. Hence, strategic planning should be configured around these core competencies. Leaders with a view from the top can help here.

Read - Strategy Consulting - Generalist Approach

Business models are built around these core competencies.

4. Are our strategies in line with the organization structure?

Will give you an example – innovation may be on the priority list of the CEO but is the underlying organizational architecture suited for the job? Bureaucracy and multiple reporting lines are the sworn enemies of Innovation. So, for the innovation agendas to work, the CEO needs to realign the organisation structure and set the platform to nurture innovation.

5. Are we technology savvy when crafting strategy?

Effective strategies are data driven and based on inputs drawn from decision science with sophisticated machine/deep learning algorithms bringing out the impossible to imagine insights and predictions. Effective operational strategies can be very responsive - an example, they can be based on immediate cumulative feedback from loT sensors placed as strategic listening posts. So, leaders need to consider technology as a key enabler for strategy formulation as well as their execution.

Read - Strategy based on Artificial Intelligence

So, with the new financial year around the corner, when the strategy and operational planning would be taken up, as business leaders it is imperative to check if our plans cover the the fives nuances of strategic planning. Let us ask ourselves these 5 question !

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Disclaimer - The opinions expressed here represent my own views and not those of my employer.