Success in business is hard work. Staying successful is even harder.
The truth is when you reach the top of your game you need to put in the hard graft to stay there. There is no rest in business, but why would you want to when you're flying high? To stay successful as a business you need to develop a clear and focused business strategy.
This article will give you three powerful ways to keep your company at the top through an effective company strategy.
1. You must set key objectives and milestones
As you’re likely to have done before, you must set key objectives and milestones. These must be new key objectives and milestones.
It can be a common failing of companies who reach a level of success that they either rest on their strategic laurels or simply do not adjust their goals when the company has gained a new status. If you keep the same objectives as the previous year then the business will plateau rather than continuing to grow.
The best tool for this strategy development is MOST as it facilitates the setting of new goals and creates an actionable strategic plan for how to achieve them. It works best as a group discussion and workshop where you facilitate the brainstorming of ways you can develop the business’s strategy. It’s important to get all the ideas offered down on paper, so then you can whittle them down to the best.
MOST stands for Mission, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics:
Mission - Decide where you want your company to move forward to, in terms of profit and turnover, with consideration of the progress you’ve already made. Add a timescale to this mission in order to create a feasible milestone. This way, when you reach your mission, you can evaluate your success quantifiably.
Objectives - Make a decision about what the steps are on your way to achieving your mission. Do not worry about the how, yet, just begin to formulate a potential journey. In the process, remember that your objectives need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable. Achievable, Realistic, and Timely).
Strategies - Now, write down potential strategies that could be successful in achieving the objectives you set. It’s good to have at least two strategies for each objective as it gives you options.
Tactics - This is where you decide the ‘how’ and delegate the ‘who.’ You need this in your MOST analysis in order to turn your strategies into specific actionable tasks that can be executed even by those members who were not part of the MOST workshop. The specificity in your tactics will be key to determining the progress your company makes from here on.
2. You need to measure goals
You need a strong evaluation system in place so you can assess your company’s progress. It’s not enough that you have ambitious goals; you must have key indicators that would help measure how much you're achieving them, if you’re achieving them at all.
It should be built into your strategic plan. In order to do this you need to have goals that are measurable as opposed to vague. This is why you must keep in mind the turnover and profit in the Mission section of your MOST analysis. This, along with a timescale, means you can effectively measure the progress your company has made for a given time.
Evaluating your company’s progress needs to be a crucial part of your business plan because it allows you to see where you can improve, where you are lagging, and which part of your plans you need to rethink.
SWOT is a brilliant tool to measure your company's strengths and weaknesses and also allows you to look at the company’s future by assessing potential external opportunities and threats.
SWOT should be a tool you use regularly to measure your company’s progress and goals. If it helps, you can even integrate SWOT into quantifiable metrics to help you be more specific on the measuring component.
If creating business plans and strategy is not a particular strength of your company, then you can bring in external support to help. A part-time strategy director with a wealth of experience in creating business strategies can help your company put together a plan to progress your business.
3. You need to ensure critical players are all aligned
A successful and profitable company is a company that has every cog in their team working together. When companies begin to falter it’s often because there has been a breakdown somewhere in the team.
Communication and delegation are key to having an efficient and successful workforce. There needs to be straight lines of communication for the quickest and best level of understanding and therefore output. This is best done through delegation so everyone knows who is responsible for what and who to contact if there is an issue.
This comes back to the tactics of the MOST tool. The doing is how a company grows and for that to happen everyone has to know what it is they have to do.
What can you do now?
By following these three powerful ways to stay at the top of your game you are more likely to secure your company’s sustainable success in the future. To begin evaluating your company and building a new business plan you can download the free Business Strategy Toolkit with templates for MOST and SWOT and start today.
If you want to find out further information about this topic you can get in touch with Boardroom Advisors Founder and Chief Executive John Courtney via email or call him on +44 (0)117 300 9945