Who says strategy needs to be complicated? Developing a plan for your organisation or business doesn’t need to be complex and the messages successful companies use to communicate their strategies are beautifully simple.

Try asking these questions about your business and follow the ABCs of the Strategy Circle:

A – Aspiration
B – Business Mission
C – Culture
D – Delivery
E – Execution
F – Feedback

This process is continuous and flows in a flywheel around the most important hub of your business: People. People touch every part of the Strategy Circle and helps the wheel turn. If people feel part of the process and believe in what the organisation is doing, energy drives the wheel and generates change.

A – Aspiration

What is the long term aspiration, vision or end state for the business? Where are you headed? What are you trying to do? What is your purpose?

Your vision may seem audacious and unrealistic but it is a something which sits at the core of the business, informs everything it does and can be felt, understood and shared by everyone in the company, top to bottom. Your employees should get why they are there and your clients should instantly understand what you are about.

“To make everyone happy” – Disney

B – Business Mission

What is the Mission you have for your business? What is the shorter term goal that will set you on the journey to achieving the long term aspirations for the company? Ask yourself: are these more realistic and achievable over the next 4-6 years? How does this differentiate you from others? Can this message be clearly and simply communicated to employees and customers? Richard Branson suggests that some of the best “mission statements” in history were mottoes brief enough to fit on a coat of arms on a shield and they worked great!

“To put a man on the moon” – NASA

C – Culture 

What culture are you trying to generate within the company and what values and behaviours underpin the way in which staff act and the business does things. How do you want them to conduct themselves? How do you want staff at the company to be viewed by customers?

Again, they need to be seen, felt and believed by employees and customers and not sound contrived. Oh, and they need to be lived and breathed by the leaders of the organisation. Every business wants to be seen as “honest, accountable, fair” or “customer focused” etc etc – but what words really sum up how you do things and why are you different? Can you define clearly: “This is the way we do things here”?

“Think Different” – Apple or “The Virgin Way” – Virgin

D – Delivery

What are the objectives, the strategic columns that support achieving your business mission? What are the key thrusts or areas of focus of your business which must succeed if you are to deliver on your goals? How will you break down the delivery of your Mission? A handfull of key goals which clearly define how you will achieve your mission should be understood and communicated throughout the business and be owned by someone at a senior team level.

E – Execution

What are the everyday actions, what is the operational detail that needs to be in place to implement the strategic objectives? How will these actions be carried out, by whom and how will they be evaluated by the owner of the objective?

F – Feedback

Regular, immediate feedback from employees, customers and suppliers about how your organisation operates is essential for continuous improvement. Do you surround yourself with “yes” men and women, or with those who challenge, criticise and offer open candour.

What is important is what you do with feedback and how you use it to make changes through your Strategy Circle. Constantly evaluating the ABCs in your Strategy Circle is key to generating growth and continuously outsmarting the competition.

And…People

People are the hub that link to every part of the Strategy Circle: by understanding the purpose and direction of the company, by being the core of the culture by the way they behave, through delivering your big picture goals with everyday actions and by providing the most effective and immediate feedback – if you let them!

Check and challenge your strategy by following these ABCs and focus on People being at the centre of your Strategic Circle.

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