How to write an effective business strategy

If you’re a fan of The Apprentice, you’ll be familiar with the word ‘strategy’ which is sprinkled around liberally by all of the contestants. Unfortunately, overuse of the word strategy can often be a camouflage to mask a lack of real knowledge about what strategy is or how it can be useful in a business context. Tricres, who offer online courses on business strategy, like to keep things a lot simpler with a strategy model called Habits and Housekeeping.

Put simply, a strategy is a high-level plan of action. There are three words in that definition that will make the difference between a successful strategy and an unsuccessful one. Your strategies must be ‘high level’. Do not be tempted to write War and Peace. Keep the strategies to around one to two sides of paper and make sure that whoever you share them with, understands them. No fancy nancy language which can lead to confusion.

 ‘Action’ is the word that you should focus on here. Many business owners write beautiful strategies and then allow them to gather dust on their desk or in their laptop. Once you’ve decided on your overall business strategy, then you need to go ahead and take action. Navel gazing won’t grow your business.

Lastly, once you have your strategy, you need to remember that it can be changed. If the conditions change, your busi ness changes or something isn’t working with your strategy, for goodness sake, change it. Set a review date in every strategy you write for your business so you can keep on track.

So, what’s the point in writing strategies anyway? Firstly, you can’t hold all the information in your own head about your business when you have other people working with you. It’s not good for you or them. Your business has more value if other people know where its’s going, plus you can delegate the accountability and responsibility for the delivery of a strategy, which frees you up to get on with that task of working on your business. In a larger business, you’ll be delegating the responsibility for writing as well as delivering the various strategies such as sales, marketing, talent pipeline etc.

In addition, completing your Habits and Housekeeping strategies gives your business the equivalent of a log book, similar to having a log book for your car. It means your business can be run without you at the helm 24/7 and has more value because it doesn’t need you to be there all the time to be successful.

Lastly, how will you reach your destination if you have no idea how you’re going to get there? Having well thought through strategies means you can plan where you’re heading and know when you go off course. It’s like the auto pilot on an aeroplane – set the course and when you hit turbulence, it’s so much easier to get back on track.