Six Ways to Make Sure Your Strategy Kicks Butt
Remarkable strategies enable businesses to surpass their competitors. They have six characteristics that make them able to kick a little competitor butt.
- Answer the question, “Different or Better”? Remarkable strategies move the business toward being different and better.
- Drive toward command of a niche or scale. For a strategy to create consistently higher profit, it must either drive toward command of a market niche, or to ever improving operational efficiency through scale. You can’t do both.
- Stretch the organization to challenge the status quo. Remarkable strategies challenge the way things are done today. <!–more–>
- Anticipate and engage the organization in the future. A strong strategy anticipates its own obsolescence. Anticipation is the new agility.
- Can be expressed in 2-3 short sentences so it’s understood by everyone. Remarkable strategies capture and hold the imagination of everyone touched by it – owners, customers, employees and communities – in a simple way.
- Link directly to execution through a disciplined plan of action. Remarkable strategies are remarkably actionable. They have clear priorities, clear ownership of those priorities from the top to the bottom of the organization, define success as a result, not an activity, and drive accomplishment of goals by quarters, not years.
Watch the 30 second and 45 second video below. #1 — Original Apple MacBook commercial. #2 a parody which points out the “differences” between the MacBook Air and more traditional laptops.
MacBook Air Commercial (00:30)
Simplifying Complexity is Powerful