Evaluating progress key to a successful strategy

At the mid-year mark, individuals and organisations who formulated strategies and action-plans to achieve set goals at the end of the year are already half-way through the implementation process.  

Just as in life, proper business strategy formulation and implementation requires high-level planning, evaluation and control in order to achieve desired goals.  

Without strategy, execution is continually aimless. Without execution, strategy is considered useless. Life failures attest to it that without a proper strategy, an individual or organisation will endlessly operate like a ship without a rudder, always going round in circles.

However, how well resources are allocated and utilised determine the truly successful stories. Only a good strategy which is also well implemented contributes to the success of a firm.

Actually, strategy is like buying a bottle of fine red wine – Cabernet Sauvignon – when you take your lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it!

Admittedly, almost similar strategies have benefited generations of individuals and multinationals as resources available to achieve specific laid down goals have always been limited, so setting up goals, determining action points, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions have always borrowed from each other – albeit with innovative additions.  

Beyond the razzmatazz, strategy must be good. A good strategy should have an underlying structure and essentially explain three parts; a diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge; a guiding policy for dealing with the challenge; and coherent actions designed to carry out the guiding policy.

The world increasingly recognizes the importance of strategy. The United States, for instance, illustrated these three elements of strategy in its Cuban Missile Crisis approach about half a century ago.

In the modern era, the Leicester City's Premier League win is one of the most remarkable sporting miracle of our time, yet what Manager Claudio Ranieri employed was a diagnosis, guiding policy and workable action plans. Simply put, you won’t go far in football unless you know where the goalposts are.

In all fairness, success doesn't necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won't win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Indeed, the main aspects of strategy include premeditation, the anticipation of others behaviour, and the purposeful design of coordinated actions. This enables a strategic approach to solve a design problem, with trade-offs among various elements that must be arranged, adjusted and coordinated, rather than a plan or choice.

Mid-way through our strategy implementation, we are typically evaluating our implementation action points developed to achieve the goals set up to guide the process at the beginning of the year.

However, this will depend upon the ability to foresee future consequences of present initiatives. We must consider the basic requirements for strategy development which include extensive knowledge about the environment, market and competitors. Other factors are the ability to examine this knowledge as an interactive dynamic system; and the imagination and logic to choose between specific alternatives.

Perhaps, though, we must not turn a blind eye to the turbulence of the 21st century as a weak global economy, corporate scandals, threat of terrorism, instability of oil prices and currency fluctuations impact directly on our strategic projections and actual results.

Looking at the local retail industry for example, we see that a number of the “generation-y” brands have performed exceptionally well while a veteran like listed chain Uchumi Supermarkets is finding the nut too hard to crack even though operating under similar market fundamentals – and holding a resume with a wealth of experience spanning many decades.

The home-grown retail chain in which the government, through the Ministry of Trade, is one of the big shareholders, has proposed as an approach, a debt-for-equity swap with its suppliers.

Without doubt, modern business strategy demand that we determine the basic long-term goals, adopt courses of action and allocate resources necessary for carrying out these goals.

A contingency action-plan is always advisable when it is ascertained that the attainment of the goals are far from the reality at the mid-mark point.

Strategic management is therefore necessary for managing the relationship between the organization and the environment; if this is to be done effectively leading to the expected outcome.

As Professor Michael Porter of Harvard University, the father of modern strategy, points out; “Strategy must define a broad formula for how a business is going to compete, what its goals are, and the policies that are needed to carry out the goals.”  

Actually, strategy is a multiple-edged sword. It can be used as a plan, where a directed course of action is applied to achieve intended set of goals; similar to the strategic planning concept. More importantly, other approaches to strategy would be applied to use it as ploy, pattern, position or perspective.  

When approached as a ploy, it is used as a specific maneuver intended to outwit a competitor or rival. 

Today, strategy may recursively look ahead and consider possible outcomes against each set of action employed to determine the choices to be made to ensure the most productive outcome.

This augment suffices. You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Comparable to walking and chewing gum – if you will.

Strategies thus require us to go through a sequence of solutions to determine the best possible way to maximize gains derived from our competitive advantage but must from time to time be evaluated to ensure that we are on the right strategic mix.

The writer is a Communications and Corporate Strategist – Email [email protected]