In the first part of the series I talked about what a Strategy is. If you don't want to go back and read that in full (although it's well worth it), there's two key points I want you to keep in mind as you read this post.

• 👉 Strategy is about commitment. 
• 👉 Keep things simple.

Strategy is about choice. What you're going to do, how you're going to do it, how you know you've achieved it. Answering these questions with clear, specific and tangible actionable answers that you can and will commit to is the foundation of what makes a good strategy.

There's a reason why keeping it simple comes after the point about commitment. Commitment is significant, it can feel final. It's easy to fall into a trap (which I'll talk about later) that make setting strategy complicated, challenging or even impossible. That's why it's important to find balance. Keeping things simple means finding the balance between too much and not enough, it means making your strategy accessible, purposeful and useful. You're not building the perfect process, you're building a strategy - a plan of action you are committing to that will drive your company to success.

If you nail these two you'll undoubtedly create a good, useful strategy that will set direction and action for you and your team. 

But if it's just those two things, why is it so hard to set strategy?

Are you sure you have everything you need to build a strategy?

Strategies have been built by all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. Sometimes with big teams, huge offsites, lots of data and expertise. Other times it's on the back of a napkin after a long night of drinking in a bar at 3am. 

There are definitely right ways and wrong ways - but usually that's not about the process (although process helps, more on that another time) it's about preparation to succeed. The magic can happen everywhere and the beauty of being human means that spark can come at the most unexpected of times and there are things you can do to make that much more likely.

Have you even got the right people in the room?

This can be a horrible balancing act. Too many people and any process or workshop can be chaotic, messy and ultimately confusing. Gaining consensus on questions is the path to commitment. The more voices you have, the harder this will be.

On the other hand though, with too few people you'll risk group think. Less people could mean having no outside voices, no different opinions and it becomes a challenge develop ideas. You might miss out on expertise or knowledge, insight that can only come from a specific person working in a specific discipline.

At the risk of disappointing you here, there's no hard and fast rule when it comes to inviting people to this process. But there are some tips I can share with you.

• 👉 Set clear expectations. Set clear goals. Send these out before with a strong opinion (loosely held) on the steps you're going to take.
• 👉 Circulate this as publicly as makes sense, getting feedback and leveraging those around you to get feedback on who should attend and how they will bring value.
• 👉 Be inclusive and invite more people than you think you need, make sure to get representation from every major area in your business. 

I'd also strongly recommend sessions like this are done in person. Remember the magic? That's not going to happen as someone presents slides, or you're writing post-its. It's going to come at breakfast, in the lift, at dinner, getting coffee. That will turn these sessions from good to great and if you don't set that up you won't get it.  If people can't attend in person, they can't come - set high expectations in this process and think hard before you accept anything less than perfect.

Lastly remember the purpose of building a strategy and it's impact to company - especially those that are not in the room. You're making some big decisions, setting direction and defining plans that could mean changes for others. Either in their job role, or just in the work that they are going to be doing. Having representatives from those areas means you can work through any impact and set everyone up to succeed in what might be significant change.

Have you got the right data?

It's never been easier to get data, from customer data, sales data, usage data, financial data - and you'll need it. Without real insight and numbers, you won't be able to set constraints or boundaries, cut through unknowns or be able to set the goals that will define your strategies success.

Depending on your type of business, there will be many different data points which could be useful to building a strategy. Deciding on what data you need is much like deciding what people you need to invite. Too little and you'll miss out on important insight. Too much and you'll spend more time trying to understand and piece things together than using it for it's intended purpose - to help you make decisions.

There is some data that you will always need and going into a process like this without them is setting yourself up for failure.

That's Financial Data.

• How much money is in the bank?
• What's your MRR/ARR?
• Gross/Net Profit?
• What are your Operating costs?
• What's your average customer value?
• What about any liabilities and other costs, like tax?

This list isn't complete by any means, but everything will come back to these numbers eventually.

Want to make a bit strategic bet? Have we got the money to do that? What happens if it goes well? What happens if it doesn't? These numbers let you explore those scenarios and make them a bit more real and give you more confidence to commit.

I'd strongly recommend that these numbers are shared transparently with your group. Many companies don't do this as well as they should, but if you are asking people to work together to form a strategy, arm them with the things that they need to make informed and therefore better decisions. 

These scenarios won't ever be perfect, but it's going to be more 'real' and grounded in reality which will help you move through the process with more confidence.

This is the bare minimum.

Sales data, customer data, usage data, internal and external risks (yes that's data). All of these will be useful to you when used in the right amount. 

But how do you know what to bring?

My advice is to 'have' everything and only 'use' what you need. Conversations might go in all different directions, leading to an 'Aha!' moment that might need a bit of sales or customer data that turns that into a critical part of your strategy.

You'll more than likely have regular reports from different parts of the business, when inviting from those areas have them be ready and prepared to share those reports, summarise them to the top 3-5 key points and numbers that drive decision making. 

As the person driving this process, you'll need to think hard about the context of your business and what data could be useful. Are you entering a time where you need to really develop your product? Then customer and usage data could be really useful to help set the scene. Or is your product great, but you want to expand into new markets? Then country data, competitor data and operating data might be useful to help make that decision.

As an Operations professional, you'll have a broad understanding of what's going on and if you've done your homework well enough will understand the context better than anyone. Allowing you to curate and be prepared to make this process a success.

Strategy traps and how to avoid them.

If you've been working in Operations for a while, undoubtably you've heard some of the traps when it comes to these processes. Here's some common ones and tips to avoid them.

We must do everything!

You absolutely do not. In fact, you absolutely must not. That's not a strategy. Remember the quote from Michael Porter?

Strategy is about choosing what not to do. 

Attempting to do everything demonstrates a lack of focus. Strategy is about commitment to action and that means having clear, defined, actionable plans that you and your team can execute on. 

If you start to go down this path, use techniques like 'Must, Should, Could' or just a simple stack rank or scoring system of your plans measured against your potential strategy. Great facilitation is necessary here, even someone who can tie-break if necessary to help decide and start moving forward. 

Then set a clear timeframe to review, check progress and make any changes. 

Making commitments on others behalf, or unprepared commitment

I know I've talked a lot about strategy being a commitment, but commitment doesn't come blindly. When building a strategy, you are inevitably building a plan of action that others need to execute. Then timelines, resources, capacity, cost and other things start to come in to question and here's a potential trap you need to avoid. 

Will that initiative take 3 months or 6 months?

That could be the key to a successful strategy. But how do you know? If it's a brand new idea, you might need to take a step back, have a breakout group to give as good an estimate on those questions as possible to be able to continue to build the strategy. 

Make sure to bring the right people to the session to be able to build confidence in these answers, even to a reasonable level. Accept when they can't, be deliberate in your investigation and curiosity - as a facilitator you'll need to handle this part incredibly well as it's easy for some and hard for others to plan and estimate work, especially when it's new or unknown.

And whatever you do, don't just wing it. 

Just wing it!

We've already talked about data and how important it is to make good decisions in your strategy. This trap is when you start to ignore that data and build a strategy or a plan that's 'best endeavours'.

Keeping things simple means cutting through noise and wilfully ignoring things that don't make a material difference, that can only come with a clear understanding of context, risk, experience and expertise. Don't fall into the trap of allowing that to turn into ignorance and make commitments without at least a level of defensible confidence that you can start taking action.

Be curious and leverage the group that you have, push and collaborate to get to the heart of things - use questions like "What happens if X changes?", "What do we do if Y happens?" and you can start to discover what are the most important things to others (based on their field of expertise and role) and how you can leverage this (or not) as part of this process.

Never just 'accept' - this is about commitment, that means confidence and that is based in data, experience and expertise. If you need to step back, do more work, then do that rather than make a plan built on a shaky foundation.

Thinking you're done

Strategies are usually just the starting point. An exhausting few days (or more) of prep, workshops and discussions. Dinners and arguments, debates and breakfast. When things start to take shape and you have your strategy defined, a set of initiatives and measurements in place that creates a buzz and excitement it's easy to think that you are done. Even when everything goes perfectly. With lots of 'Aha!' moments, a strategy and plan that gets you excited and a room full of agreement you might fall into the trap of thinking the hard work is done.

But it's not over.

Strategy is about commitment to a direction, a path, a plan. That needs to be communicated, resources and people need to do the work. Existing work needs to be finished, or stopped. Artefacts need to be built and validated. There's no shortage of work that needs to be done here and as part of this series there'll be an entire section on Planning and Execution because it's so critical to making a success of your strategy.

At this point, my advice is to remember that when you walk out of that room as a team having achieved so much, it's a rallying cry, a call to arms - you have made a commitment to this strategy and we are going to carry out that work.

The group should then meet regularly and be accountable for making it happen. As part of your regular organisation rhythm and cadence - use this momentum to make your strategy a reality.

Now your strategies will suck less (hopefully not at all)

Good preparation can be the difference between success and failure when it comes to setting strategy. Getting the right data, inviting the right people, circulating the intent and what you expect from people. There's a lot of work that goes into the moments before creating your strategy.

Using these tips, avoiding those traps and learning those lessons will help you ensure when you define strategy, you'll be a lot more likely to succeed.

We're not done with this series, there's lots more to cover when it comes to building strategies. We've already talked about what is a strategy, some of the traps on what causes a strategy to suck and in the rest of the series we'll talk about when is the right time to set a strategy, how to set them and some tools and templates that I've used in the past to make this work many times.

Want more? Need some help? Call the Wolf.