A strategy review allows you to evaluate the state of your strategy choices. Customers, market, competencies, key activities, and business results are all elements to consider before even addressing the question of "strategic" planning.

Too often, planning meetings focus on identifying “misaligned” priorities and allocating budgets, without regard for the initial strategy choices.

I have even attended planning meetings where the management team did not address strategy at all!

It is then difficult to achieve the desired objectives.

Actions are identified, yes, of course! But either they are not aligned with the strategy, or they are not implemented due to a lack of resources or an appropriate management system.

As Roger Martin reminds us, a plan is not a strategy.

The Plan determines how resources are allocated, but Strategy reflects the fundamental choices that define what we do and what we do not do.

Pay attention to these 10 key questions to ensure the success of your next strategy review.

The 10 Questions

1.Are the strategic choices that define your positioning not only known, but also clearly understood and mastered by all leaders in the organization?

2.Do you have a clear and accurate picture of the conditions for success of your strategic choices and their evaluation in the face of market evolution, your competitors, and your customers?

3.Do you have a clear picture of the weak signals likely to disrupt your organization, challenge your strategy, or open the door to new opportunities?

4.Is your understanding of customers' jobs, pains and gains still adequate? Have your customers' criteria for competition evolved?

5.How is the organization doing in terms of its culture, processes, management systems, and its capacity to implement its priorities?

6.What is the gap to bridge between the desired strategic position and the organization's current position in the market? What progress has been made, and to what extent have the measures taken been successful?

7.What are the emerging opportunities that need to be explored? Are you clear on the means to deploy to take advantage of them and how to make it a collective effort?

8.How will you integrate the periodic reviews of progress, alignment, and management of strategic projects into current operations?

9.How will you measure this progress and ensure that you have adequate signals in place to highlight issues requiring support and assistance to avoid delays and non-realization?

10.How can teams integrate these projects into their current activities? What are the necessary resources and means to succeed?

Enabling Better Decisions

These 10 questions, asked BEFORE your strategic planning meeting, will help you develop and initiate a real, comprehensive strategic reflection that leads to an updated strategy and more informed decisions.

Only after validating or reaffirming your strategy can you move on to priority planning.

Your plan will then enable the targeted execution of the strategic choices essential to your organization's ambitions.

Have a great week!

Eric L’Heureux