Business Strategy: Improving Results and Increasing Value

Course Overview

The ability to develop and implement effective business strategies need not always have a family component to it, but always needs to be developed in a disciplined, thorough and effective manner. It needs to link analysis, design and implementation in a seamless fashion, and needs to link the investment made to concrete results in the real world.

HEADING COMING SOON

Strategy also needs to be based on a firm understanding of the vision and values owners have in mind. Strategy is, in a way, only a means to a greater end. It can be defined as:

“The art and science of informed action to achieve a specific vision, an overarching objective or a higher purpose for a business enterprise.”

Although each strategy is different from any other in ways both great and small, good strategy always emerges from an effort that encompasses good process as well as good content.

The elements of good process are defined as:

1. 1. Ensure an Effective Process.
   2. Ensure an Inclusive Process – Break Down the Hierarchy.
   3. Set Long-Term Objectives for the Individuals and the Group.
   4. Test the Logic and the Process.
   5. Balance Strategic Planning with Strategic Flexibility.
   6. Search for Nonlinearity and Creative Breakthroughs.
   7. Embrace Risk, Action and the Acceptance of Failure.

Good strategy always is pegged to the accomplishment of a set of specific targets and results, and was once described by one of the founders of Bain & Company as ‘the inexorable flow from insight to action…’

The targeted results, and definition of success, are often captured, like a balanced scorecard, in areas of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factors.

The sequenced approach set out here unfolds in three phases: diagnosis, design and implementation. There are seven steps within each phase, often with more than one display related to each step in the attached coursebook examples and templates.

Objectives

The objective of this course is simply to give to you the structure, process, and content required to create and implement valuable strategies to realize your own visions and achieve your unique overarching purpose.

Instructor

Mark Haynes Daniell