At Business Success Consulting Group, we focus on strategy and process development, planning, and implementation. Every business needs a workable strategy and efficient processes to grow successfully. While that strategy is specific to the business model, there are key factors that stay the same during the development and implementation process.
Developing a business strategy
We often come in to assist a business as it is growing or attempting to gain a foothold in its industry. The first step of this process is to consider strategy. Many business owners have great ideas that could launch the company from 0-60, but haven’t yet put processes in place to achieve these concepts. Here’s how to outline your strategy for success:- Create an overarching goal for your business
- Write down what you’d like to accomplish. Do these ideas fit with the overarching goal? If not, why? If so, how so?
- Prioritize your objectives - what will get results rapidly?
- When should each goal be accomplished? This year, this month, in ten years?
- Note how you are working toward these goals now. Consider why you are doing things this way - can the process be made more efficient?
- Create steps which focus on accomplishing each goal.
- Break each step down further into specific tasks.
- Assign these tasks, with an ETA, to a specific job. Is that posting filled, do you need to hire some people, or are you going to be working the extra hours to accomplish these tasks?
- Review the plan and make sure each task is essential. If not, can you make the strategy more efficient by removing the assignment or accomplishing the goal differently?
- Create a reporting process which will give you an idea of the success of each step. This is essential to understanding if your plan is actually working.
- Implement the strategy.
Successful Strategy Implementation
Execution of your plan is just as important as the development process. An essential part of the implementation is the reporting process. As your plan is put into action, you need to know that each step was adequately accomplished and that it achieved the necessary result in an expected time period. If this is not the case, it’s vital to find out why not. Perhaps a process needs to be adjusted, or an employee needs some correction. Understanding what went wrong and what is working early on will tell you how to improve the strategy over time. Five keys to successful strategy implementation are:- Assigning the task to the right person.
- A clear understanding of what success or failure looks like. For example, if a task is accomplished two weeks late, is that still a success or are the timelines so tight that this would be a failed task?
- An efficient reporting process that rapidly notifies you of success or failure.
- Review processes which evaluate and reinforce success while examining and correcting failure.
- Changes implemented based upon the review. Alternatively, if tasks are accomplished successfully, continued implementation of the strategy with no changes made.
