Business Strategy Development #1: How do I choose to play.

-By Tshepo Motsoeneng.

WHATEVER BUSINESS FIELD YOU ARE COMPETING IN, YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE COMPETITION. WE ARE ALL FIGHTING TO CREATE VALUE AND CONVINCE OUR POTENTIAL CLIENTS TO CHOOSE US. BUT BEFORE WE CAN EVEN GET TO THAT GOAL, WE NEED TO OVERCOME THE HUDRLES HOLDING US BACK, FROM REACHING OUR GOALS. THE SECOND IMPORTANT QUESTION WILL ALWAYS BE: HOW DO I CHOOSE TO PLAY?

We are using strategy to focus on specific problem, hurdle or issue facing our company. We can also use strategy to plot where we will make the most impact and have the best value preposition for our market segment and allow us to win and dominate. As with the last letter, we need to identify where to as an owner since you have chosen compete in. You know how the rules of the sector, the culture, the mindset, skills, and customers. Now you need to choose how you want to play in the market space? This is where all your data and analysis become important. You have seen how your competition carries out their work, data from your own process and departments, and analyzed and related it to the problem and in devising the solution, you have to understand how you will outmaneuver or eliminate the issue. Perhaps you will choose to do the following:

–         Cut down the product line to focus on key products and improve them,

–         Expanding into a new market,

–         Adapting or changing your business model,

–          Selling or buying certain assets,

–         Mergers or acquisitions,

–         Waiting for the next opportunity to come up,

Whatever the choice, you need to focus on how and why that specific methodology with solve your specific problem or whether it will best place you to take advantage of your market segment. You will then shift your departments and resources to this project. The impact of such should be monitored bi-monthly and evaluated on 12-18month post implementation.

The monitoring will speak to the red flags/risks management of the project. You do not want to continue with a project that is raising red flags non-stop, without continuously evaluating the risks in a non-biased manner. Most flags will be a resistance to change, which would so include, but not exclusive to the owner’s mindset and ideology.

That is why this principle is one of the hardest of the principles of strategy to implement. It is the one that actually calls for change and will assist in defining even where to play, the capabilities, and the management systems. As with all the principles, they do not follow an order, but they are subjective to the challenges an organization and owner faces. As such the diagnosis of the problem or challenge has to always be forefront, and has to remove the ego, bias, and prejudice of all involved in leadership and management roles, and speak fundamentally to the organization, it’s culture, processes and roles played.