Topics › Defining and delivering strategy
Rethinking the business strategy
Customers buy differently, new competitors set the price, or technology has changed what your product is worth. The plan that carried the business so far no longer holds, and the leadership team needs to agree on what needs adjustment.
What is at stake
A business that keeps executing an outdated strategy spends its resources defending positions it is already losing. Every year of delay narrows the options, as competitors take the ground and the investment needed to change course grows. Inside the company, the uncertainty shows up as projects without direction and managers who hedge instead of deciding.
What typically goes wrong
- The strategy review produces a document, and the leadership team returns to its old priorities.
- Each member of the leadership team defends the part of the business they are responsible for.
- The analysis is thorough, but the choices it calls for are never made: what to stop, where to stop competing, what to give up.
- The new strategy is decided without the people who will have to deliver it, and they learn of it from a presentation.
- Implementation is treated as a separate project that starts once the strategy is finished.
What changes for you
- A shared view in the leadership team of where the business competes, and where it no longer does.
- Clear decisions about what to stop, made deliberately rather than by neglect.
- A strategy that the people responsible for delivering it helped shape and can explain.
- First steps that start while the strategy is being finalized, not months afterwards.
How we approach it
We start with the facts the leadership team disagrees on: how the market is changing, where the business still earns its money and where it is losing ground. From there we work with the leadership team on the choices the strategy requires, including the uncomfortable ones, until each member is prepared to stand behind them. We involve the people who will carry the strategy early, and stay involved as it moves from decision into the organization and the market.
What we clarify first
- Where does the business still earn its money, and where is it losing ground?
- Which decisions has the leadership team been avoiding, and why?
- Who has to carry the new strategy, and when will they be involved?
Tell us what’s at stake
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You describe the situation. We tell you honestly whether we can help, and how.