At the heart of a strategy is an approach for achieving your chosen objectives and overcoming the challenges associated with it.

Strategy

We are stepping out of the ‘Powerhouse’ programme in this article to remind readers about long term planning, something that seems to have been dispensed with and replaced by short-termism, in business, in politics and in the domestic arena.

"At the heart of a strategy is an approach for achieving your chosen objectives and overcoming the challenges associated with it.¹"

“If an initiative doesn’t promise additional value to at least three stakeholder groups, this initiative is not strategic.²”

One of the leaders’ greatest challenges is to set the right strategy and for many of them answering the question of whether to be a market follower or a market leader will be one the most difficult they have to answer. At Grantrow we don’t wish to be either. We will be a market shaper. We will disrupt the market by connecting small businesses to the services they need to deliver significant growth. We offer to double both productivity and profitability in two years. We don’t use templates. We don’t believe that one size fits all. We don’t believe that we should force our products on you. We do believe that everything we do must add value at every stage to our customers, therefore we will connect you to the service you most need first and when you need more, we will connect you to those services.

Of course, when you are ready for change (see the last article) you will ask to be connected to the full Powerhouse programme and to the services that will reduce your cost of operation. When you are ready for change you will understand that the whole game has changed, and the ‘secret sauce’ that once made you successful, has passed its sell-by date.

Your competition has already eaten up any differential your market leadership might have given you and is eyeing you as a possible ‘amuse bouche’ for their growth strategy. If you are content with being a market follower, you are being lapped by your competitors and you will never catch up because they are moving faster than you are. Downsizing will not help as all the people who believed in your vision and could have helped with your new one, have already gone to your competitors and those who you have left are mainly permafrost and saboteurs.

Transformation terrifies leaders as there is no path to follow, no book with a template you can use and the rules that made you successful no longer exist. Anything can go wrong at any time along the path into the unknown but if you have the right feedback systems and measures in place you will know exactly what your options are in relation to where you currently are on your own path.

Your strategy is your choice (and the choice of your investors). Reinvent yourself and reinvent the game you are playing or watch your plans disintegrate no matter how much effort you spend pretending everything is ok. It is possible to transform your culture in one day. Why don’t you try this out? Tell everyone in your organisation that every communication from now on must add value and see what happens. For every decision you make, ask the question ‘how does this add value to our customers, our people, or the neighbourhood?’

¹Strategic Thinking newsletter: Svyatoslav Biryulin, MAY 14, 2024

²Ibid