Strategy: A Living, Breathing Approach to Organisational Success

Oct 10, 2024

4 min read

When it comes to organisational strategy, many assume it's a one-off exercise - you develop a plan, lock it away, and let it run its course. But, in reality, strategy isn’t linear. Instead, it's an ongoing, iterative process that evolves with every market shift, customer demand, and internal capability. It’s a dynamic journey that requires constant reflection, realignment, and execution to remain relevant and impactful.

Why Strategy Isn’t a One-Way Street

The traditional linear approach to strategy often falls short because it assumes a predictable, stable environment. However, today's business landscape, especially in industries like manufacturing, is anything but predictable.

External factors such as technological advancements, supply chain disruptions, and shifting customer expectations can drastically alter the playing field. To keep up, organisations need a strategy that evolves alongside these changes.

A good framework to use to keep sight of all the influential elements is the PESTLE framework.

The Iterative Nature of Strategy

An iterative strategy means continuously refining and adjusting your direction based on feedback, results, and changes in the environment. It involves regular check-ins, reassessments, and adaptations, ensuring that your strategic goals remain aligned with the realities of your business and market.

Here’s how an iterative process typically unfolds:

Set the Strategic Direction: Establish your core objectives, vision, and mission. This sets the foundation but remember, it’s not set in stone. A keynote on it.
Implement and Experiment: Deploy initiatives, projects, and actions that align with your strategic objectives. Treat this phase as an experiment – test different approaches, tactics, and ideas.
Monitor and Measure: Regularly track the progress of your initiatives. Use both quantitative metrics (e.g., sales growth, production efficiency) and qualitative feedback (e.g., employee engagement, customer satisfaction).
Review and Reflect: Assess what’s working and what isn’t. This could involve examining external factors such as market trends, competitor activities, or technological shifts, as well as internal elements like team performance and resource utilisation.
Refine and Adjust: Based on your review, tweak your strategy. Discard elements that aren't delivering value, amplify those that are, and introduce new initiatives where necessary.
Repeat the Cycle: Start the process again with the insights gained, always refining your strategic direction.

Quarterly Check-ins: Staying Aligned and Agile

To maintain momentum and ensure your strategy remains aligned, it's crucial to implement quarterly check-ins. These serve as strategic pit stops where you pause, evaluate, and make adjustments as needed.

Here’s how to make the most of these quarterly reviews:

Revisit Your Objectives: Are your goals still relevant? Have any market shifts occurred that warrant a change in focus?
Assess Progress: Evaluate the progress of your key initiatives. Are they on track? Are you seeing the desired results?
Identify Barriers: Pinpoint any obstacles hindering your progress. Is it a lack of resources, skill gaps, or external factors beyond your control?
Realign and Reset: Adjust your plans based on the insights gained. If a specific project isn’t yielding results, consider pivoting or refining it.
Communicate and Engage: Share the outcomes of these check-ins with your team. Make them a collaborative effort to ensure everyone feels involved and understands the changes.

Quarterly check-ins are not just about measurement; they are about momentum. They keep your strategy at the forefront of everyone’s mind, ensuring it's not just a document gathering dust but a living framework guiding everyday actions.

Strategy: A Network, Not a Document

One of the most significant misconceptions about strategy is that it's a document – a beautifully crafted plan that gets neatly filed away, never to see the light of day until the next annual review.

But a truly effective strategy is a network, an intricate web of interconnected elements that touch every part of your organisation. It’s a series of decisions, actions, and behaviours that bring your vision to life.

Here’s how this interconnectedness plays out:

Internal Elements: Your strategy weaves through every department, team, and individual within your organisation. From the sales team's approach to customer interactions to the manufacturing floor's process efficiencies, every action should align with and reinforce your strategic objectives.
External Opportunities: A successful strategy isn’t just about internal alignment; it’s about recognising and capitalising on external opportunities. This means being attuned to market trends, customer demands, and technological advancements and integrating them into your plans.
Harmony and Alignment: A living strategy requires harmony across the organisation. It’s about ensuring that every employee, from top leadership to frontline workers, understands the strategic direction and their role in executing it. This alignment transforms strategy from a mere plan into a collective effort that drives tangible results.

Building an Iterative Strategy Within Your Organisation

Transitioning to an iterative strategic process requires a shift in mindset and culture.

Here are some practical steps to help your organisation embrace this approach:

Cultivate a Culture of Agility: Encourage a mindset that welcomes change, experimentation, and learning. When employees see strategy as a flexible framework rather than a rigid plan, they become more open to adapting and refining their approach.
Empower Cross-Functional Teams: Break down silos and create cross-functional teams that can collaborate on strategic initiatives. This fosters a holistic view of the strategy, allowing different perspectives to contribute to its evolution.
Leverage Data and Insights: Regularly gather data and insights from various sources – customer feedback, market trends, operational metrics – to inform your strategic decisions. This ensures your strategy is grounded in reality and can adapt to changes as they arise.
Communicate Transparently: Share the strategic direction, progress, and adjustments with your team. Transparent communication fosters trust, engagement, and a shared sense of purpose.
Embrace Failure as Learning: Not every strategic initiative will succeed, and that’s okay. Treat failures as learning opportunities, allowing your team to reflect, adapt, and improve.

An iterative approach to strategy recognises that business isn’t a straight path but a winding journey filled with twists, turns, and opportunities. By treating strategy as a dynamic process that evolves with your organisation and the external environment, you ensure that it remains relevant, impactful, and deeply integrated into every aspect of your business.

Remember: Strategy isn’t a document that lives in a closet; it’s an intricate network of your organisation's internal elements, meshed with external opportunities, executed in harmony and alignment. By embracing an iterative process, you empower your organisation to adapt, thrive, and succeed in an ever-changing landscape.

Are you ready to shift from a static to an iterative strategic approach? Start your first quarterly check-in today and connect with us to watch your strategy transform into a living force that drives your organisation forward!