transcription puppy - Factors to Turn Your Strategic Planning Into Execution The ability to implement business strategy successfully is dependent on proper alignment of strategy with internal and external business conditions. Here are 4 factors that business leaders must consider and connect to their road maps during the strategic planning process and beyond. Customer Marketplace Realities It's no longer enough to respond to the articulated needs of the marketplace. If you do not have a process for empathizing deeply with your target customer, profits will eventually migrate to the first competitor who is able to articulate the "silent priorities" of your marketplace and provide for them. Sustained success today requires spending almost as much time in your customer's strategic space as you do in yours. If you're a business leader, assign a team that has continuing responsibility for delving deeply into the strategic challenges of your customer. Another technique is to create an infrastructure of continuous customer interaction in which customers get used to sending you a stream of information about their business, their challenges, and even their plans. Macroeconomic Realities and Trends Macroeconomic trends have the important characteristic of being able to shift customer patterns and priorities. The ability to consistently spot these trends early and accurately analyze them is a mark of a great leadership team. Whether your organization is a small or big company, you must keep a close eye on macroeconomic conditions and draw up strategic and operating plans that acknowledge them, as well as contingency plans to execute if some of your fundamental assumptions prove to be wrong. Competitor Positioning And Strategy One of the most startling realities of today's globalized, digitized and rapidly evolving business environment is the ever-changing definition of who constitutes your competition. A local spa business that once had to contend with 3 other competitors in a small town today competes with dentists (dental spas), chiropractors, and maybe even allergists. As a business strategist, you must develop "funnel vision" - the ability to monitor adjacent industries both for ideas and for the possibility that a competitor might be rising from there. You must also commit to regularly scanning value chain neighbors to identify strategic moves that could seriously affect the viability of your business model.
Internal Resources And Ability To Execute Your business strategy implementation process will stumble if you do not have a very clear grasp of the capabilities of your business team and the resources your leaders have available to successfully execute strategy.
Do your product lines and service offerings represent the past demand or the future priorities of your industry? Does your company have a culture of execution, accountability and adaptability? Is your organizational structure updated to the current needs of the marketplace? How does your sales force compare with those of the competition in terms of length of time in the industry and in profile? Is your organization structurally and culturally focused to be clearly understood by potential partner companies? Does your organization have a deep enough network of strategic alliances to respond nimbly to market changes? Perform an audit of your business - your core competencies, your structure, culture, marketing and core processes. Examine your budget. Dig deep into the reality of your organization's position.