Why creating a strategy review for your business is important and the steps towards strategic change for 2024

Let’s explore some of the benefits of holding a strategy review

 

1. One of the principle benefits of a strategy review is the opportunity for employees to re-engage with the strategy. If you sit on the board, or the leadership team you may be wellversed with the organisational strategy, but remember others in different positions may nothave had the opportunity to be immersed in the strategic plan. A periodic review with everyemployee will bring focus and alignment for everyone, and can also promote a renewedfocus and purpose for the organisation.
2. It promotes alignment. Now that you have brought everyone within the organisation together to develop and deliver mutual goals and objectives, promotes a sense of collaboration and teamwork amongst everyone. Employees can now make the connection between their everyday activities and the bigger organisational picture.
3. It promotes team building, leadership and a high performance culture. The strategy review provides the perfect opportunity for leaders to develop a culture of rewarding the actions of their team members that align with the organisational mission, vision and values.
4. It provides an opportunity to identify areas of growth that could bring a number of benefits to your organisation. Analysing current market conditions alongside your internal performance can help guide you in making the appropriate decisions for any potential changes required in your strategy. How to carry out a strategy review?

The key to a successful strategic review is to ensure the participation of everyone in your Organisation and making sure that everyone is involved and aligned with the overall organisational goals. By taking the time to review each element of your strategic plan, you can identify any weak spots and make necessary changes. This will help ensure that your organisation is well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities and meet its goals.

 

Here are some steps to ensure you identify and approach strategic changein an effective way.

 

1. Look at the big picture.  After assessing the current state of your strategic landscape, the next step is to review andevaluate your mission, vision, and values. Ask yourself whether they still reflect your organisation’s purpose and objectives. Then, check to see if the objectives you have set are still realistic and achievable. Are the goals still relevant and/or have they become outdated?
2. Review the objectives, measures and initiatives that you have put in place to support your strategic plan. Are they still effective? Are they producing the desired results? Has the environment in which you operate changed to such an extent that your initiatives may no longer be applicable?
3. Improve your monitoring and reporting  Effective reporting is essential to communicating the performance of your strategic plan. Ineffective and weak reporting is a trap many organisations can fall into and the strategy you have worked so hard to develop is now running the risk of becoming useless. Analysing the right metrics at the right time (monthly/quarterly etc.) is the key to ensuring each review sessionis as effective as possible. Structure your reports to ensure you are providing the right information at the right time. Under and over reporting is a sure road to misalignment and confusion.
4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate To ensure a successful strategic review process, it is important to think about how you will communicate with your organisation about any changes or updates that come out of the review. To ensure that everyone is on the same page and bought into the plan, there are a few tactics that you can use. One is to create a clear and concise communication plan that outlines how you will communicate any changes or updates to the strategic plan. This plan should include the channels you plan to use, how frequently you will update the organisation and who is responsible for communicating the updates.

Another strategy is to make the strategic plan as visible as possible internally. This could include creating videos, brochures, posters and other visuals that will help remind your organisation of the plan and its goals. Additionally, you can use progress reports to help track progress and celebrate successes. Finally, you should consider holding meetings or team-building activities to discuss the strategic plan and any changes or updates. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that all stakeholders have an opportunity to voice their opinions and provide feedback. By employing the tactics outlined above, you can ensure that your strategic review process is successful and that your organisation is bought into your strategic plan.

 

Steps to creating your best life through strategic thinking

Success certainly doesn’t occur by way of an accident. It is the result of having a clear and defined vision coupled with a winning strategy. When it comes to the most important test of our lives -Life Itself- we tend to become one dimensional with our thinking. And life is far from being one dimensional. The key to success is having a simple and easy to follow framework for your life. Here are 4 steps to help you discover the Incredible You.

 

1. Take a holistic view of life and define your breakthrough objectives

Remember not to be one dimensional in your approach. This is the starting point for all your strategic choices going forward. There is more to be gained than focusing only on one singular aspect of personal improvement like developing a perfect physique to show off at the beach. There are numerous dimensions that can be explored such as:

a) Physical wellbeing

b) Emotional wellbeing

c) Occupational wellbeing

d) Intellectual wellbeing

e) Social wellbeing

f) Environmental wellbeing

 

2. Know Where to Play and How to Win

Strategy is all about making choices. You have already made a choice through determining your breakthrough objectives. In business you might consider strategic factors such as Quality, Location or Product Pricing. We can adapt the same concept for building our life strategy. If we take the dimension of physical wellbeing mentioned above, we can identify a number of factors that are crucial to success.

The factors would include:

a) Diet – When, What and How you eat will have a significant bearing upon your physical wellbeing .

b) Physical activity – what area of exercise will deliver the best outcome for me and keep me focused on my desired outcome? And whatever outlet you choose remember to enjoy it!

c) Sleep patterns – Consistent sleep patterns and good quality sleep are the key to the door. Remember, if you’re tired and under rested you will not function at an optimum level.

 

3. Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and monitor

KPI is a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective and help you track your progress. Technology has come a long way in recent years for helping us track our activity through wearable devices and applications. Sticking with the previous example of physical wellbeing, what might that look like?

a) Diet – Tracking your calorie intake to ensure you are aligned with your daily intake and maintaining a daily deficit or increment depending upon your target.

b) Physical activity – Kilometers ran or walked, weight lifted at the gym, lengths of the pool completed.

c) Sleep patterns – Hours of rest per day.

 

4. Create Atomic Habits

You may be aware of the book by the same name where James Cleere describes how tiny changes lead to remarkable results. This is all about making your strategy part of your everyday life. We need to create habits so we follow through on our goals and plans. We are all guilty of this, we create a plan and don’t follow through. Creating a habit is the key to accomplishing your targets. In this digital age it has never been easier to set reminders, schedule appointments well in advance and create bullet proof calendars. Habits are the driving force of your strategy.

 

Tips for success

Lets not race off and try to bite off more than you can chew. Spend some time to understand what it is you want to achieve in life and then start defining your breakthrough objectives. Its best to focus on one objective to get the show on the road.

As you establish a number of quick wins in your chosen area you will feel the motivation to open the next stream of improvement and tackle your next objective. A good round figure for breakthrough objectives is three. This gives you plenty of scope to achieve your goals without burning yourself out.

The three objectives I chose were Physical Wellbeing, Occupational Wellbeing and Intellectual Wellbeing. I started with Physical and gradually introduced Occupational and Intellectual. I now have all three objectives up and running with a clear focus on my goals.

As the old saying goes “We are here for a good time, not a long time” so enjoy the journey. If you feel you are rock bottom in life don’t worry because its always good to come from the bottom. Don’t be afraid to chase the best version of you and live your best life!

 

To visit Tom Finn's website click here