Nuzio Bruno, Business Strategist at The Disruptive Strategy Co., presented Developing a Business Strategy at Podcamp Western MA. In this video he describes what strategy is, and isn’t. Nuzio talked about 3 steps developing a business strategy: 1. Challenge, 2. Guiding Policies or Business Guts 3. Implementation.
Developing a Business Strategy
1. Challenge
Good strategy starts with an assessment of the challenges that you need to overcome. It’s not just about being the best a customer service. It’s about what are the challenges to be great at customer service. If you need to be need to clearly identify the problems you intend to overcome, or the opportunities you plan to take advantages of. Unless you are clear about this you are just building a wish list – not a good business strategy.
2. Guiding Policies or Business Guts
Developing strong guiding principles and policies is going to be the backbone of how you make decisions in your business. These guidelines will determine how you are going to communicate with your customers. They will give you a strong basis to keep your moral code and treat customers with consistency. If you are demonstrating a consistent message and practice it tends to make your clients comfortable and you appear much more organized.
3. Implentation
Build a plan for implementation. Figure out the most important things to get done and them break them down into small actions steps that can be easily understood by everyone on your team. Make sure that these steps are specific and measurable. This is where accountability comes from. If things are specific and measurable it will tend to insulate your from bad execution or implementation.
Developing a Business Strategy doesn’t have to be scary or the product of the latest strategy tool. It does take time and a lot of hard honest analysis of the challenges you are trying to help people overcome or opportunities you want to take advantage of. At it’s core strategy is about figuring out what is important and then designing a way to take the appropriate actions for what you’ve identified.
