It takes a lot to achieve one’s goals. It takes dedication, focus, and usually relentless energy. But there is a progression of how to achieve what you seek: Strategy, Alignment, Objectives, and Implementation. Each of these components require adherence to a number of business principles; principles that apply to every individual and team in your organization. The first two components are Strategy and Alignment.
Developing a strategy is the sometimes-elusive work of planning action or activities to reach a goal. Where do we want to be and how are we going to get there? It often is just the owners, sometimes it’s the entire management team. Developing strategy is at the same time an art and science of identifying and organizing resources – people, technology, capital – aimed at a target. Thinking about strategy another way is describing how you’re going to get things done; a clear roadmap of actions that need to be taken. More often than not, the strategy highlights weaknesses in the company and thus the strategy includes the action to address them.
There are many useful tools to assist in defining a strategy. Porter’s Five Forces, SWOT analysis, PESTLE and brainstorming just to name a few. Each of them require some skill in their use but can greatly refine management focus and direction. The McNutt Group is experienced in facilitating any of these processes if you need assistance.
Alignment is the focused work of identifying those important activities that support the strategy. Think of your company as a team. Then think of all the functions of that team such as sales, marketing, engineering, IT, operations, or administration. Then think of all the people in each of those functions: each person should have at least three metrics of their work that flow up to the function goals that support the strategic goals. This is called cascading metrics and it’s a liberating, powerful function of achievement in a mature company. There are 8 main components to aligning employee activities to strategic goals. If you’d like a copy, please let us know. It’s free.
Achievement is one of the hardest most elusive goals to acquire. It’s best attained by taking one planned, calculated step at a time. That’s how we work with our clients. What’s next for your company?
