Business strategy is a substantial
element to any – or shall I say, every
- organization. And as your business gets
larger, the strategy becomes more and more important. From even the smallest business, it all
starts with a vision of your company. As
a small business owner, you have your own goals and objective. You form a strategy in your mind, whether you
realize it or not. Even from a bodega, a little mom & pop convenience store
somewhere, or a gas station, all the way up to the huge, multi-national
businesses of today, such as technology, distribution, manufacturing, food
service, restaurants. Everything starts
with the owner’s vision, and a strategy on how to get there.
For example, restaurants owners
typically have great visions of their company and the image that they want to
project. This applies to the ambiance of
the room, the atmosphere, training of their staff, the product that they put
out. It’s all in the owner’s mind. And then he’s got to execute this thing,
which is the really fun part (depending on how you define “fun”).
The thing to remember when you’re
thinking of business strategy is that, number one, everything comes from the owner of the company. That vision is what the company should be,
what he or she wants the company to be, going forward. That direction comes from the top. The
commitment. The vision. The goals and objectives. All of that has to be communicated from the
owner, through his top managers.
And the top managers have to buy into
that, because from here on, it’s a collaborative
effort strategy. Owners get to set the
vision, but you have to create your strategy amongst all of your people. You just can’t sit down and pull a strategy out
of your hat and say, “Okay boys, girls, this is it. Go do it.”
They're not going to embrace it, no matter how good a strategy it may be.
You have to be inclusive; you
can’t create it and do it all yourself.
Some people still try to do that, but for the most part, a quarterback
can’t do everything alone. He’s got 10
other men on the field to help him out. He’s also got coaches, training,
options. That old-fashioned notion of a
quarterback on one knee drawing out a play in the dirt is just not relevant
anymore.
You have to communicate the
vision and communicate what it is that you think has to be done to your top
managers. You must articulate what’s in it for them, to get them to buy into it,
to put some skin in the game. They have
to be able to have input into the creation of the strategy, so that it’s a
buy-in, in a co-creation.
The vision and missions tells everyone who you are, what you are
and who you want to be. You have to
stress the communications to all employees, customers/clients and the vendors
with whom you do business.
This is all pretty basic stuff, which makes
it all the more difficult to execute. Execution
will require the right people in the right positions to make sure the strategy
is carried out properly. Hold those
people accountable by creating metrics to measure their progress. A business strategy is a living thing. It
will change as the times change. It is not set in stone. It has to reviewed,
tweaked, and updated regularly.
That can be really tough,
especially for small and family-owned businesses. Well, in the family-owned
business, you know you’ve got to stop arguing long enough to figure out a
strategy. “And dammit, we’ll do it this way, ‘cause I’m the Daddy and I say
we’re going to do it this way!” Seriously, that's how many of these businesses
are run.
That may not be the best way to
run the organization, but it could be worse. When the patriarch or the
matriarch is taken out of the picture, it becomes very dysfunctional, very
quickly. Everybody starts fighting. It’s not very pretty. This is why it is
crucial to keep the vision of the business at the forefront when creating the
business strategy, and to have buy-in on this strategy from all senior management. Figure this stuff out in advance, with
everyone’s agreement, and then you have one less thing to fight about when that
time comes.
So, to
reiterate…
- CEO is to create the vision and oversee execution
- Create strategy plan collaboratively with top management, so there is buy-in
- Have the correct people in the right positions to execute, and hold them accountable
- Communicate up, down and sideways, and do so frequently
If the business strategy is born out of a solid vision, and holds
true to that vision, it makes the execution of day-to-day business much clearer
to the staff, and creates trust in the eyes of customers and vendors.
