Scale is a journey.
…and like any journey, without the right plan in place, the road to scale can be chaotic and potentially detrimental.
Every scale journey starts with growth… but often, growth can be difficult to navigate. New team members, unique perspectives, differing techniques and varying skill sets often result in inconsistencies and inefficiencies in your frontline operations.
The result might initially feel like you’re going in the right direction, but eventually, you’ll career off course.
The harsh truth is that for every remarkable success story, there are countless others that crash and burn. But with the right partners, processes, frameworks and tools, the road to scaling success is paved with confidence and assurance.
However, before you even get to this, every journey should begin with a clear strategy. The legendary Peter Drucker said, “Strategy is a commodity; execution is an art.” And he was right. Before you get your frameworks, processes, and structure locked down… you need an aligned and cohesive strategy.
A cohesive strategy will help your team understand:
- Where they are heading
- What they need to achieve
- How they are going to get there
Without it, each organisational action and activity will be misaligned and ultimately ineffective.
Strategy is quite a misused term, but your strategy is your plan of action at its core. It’s the
clear path you’re taking to achieve a significant goal or organisational objective. For your strategy to be effective, you need to get crystal clear on WHAT those objectives are, an action plan for HOW you’re going to meet them, and WHY you’re doing it in the first place.
This is where many businesses fall short. Without a sound strategy, a company may face dysfunctional leadership, misalignment across functions, disengaged teams and poor execution. And worse, you’ll miss realising the benefits of your investments, limiting your growth and scale opportunities.
While everyone might have a good strategy on paper, what makes a real difference is the ability to turn that strategy into seamless execution. Clear, aligned, supported, and well-communicated strategies are only as good as a well-enabled team who are laser-focused on executing them.
Where does strategy fit into your business?
At Ellivate, we are passionate about providing the tools to help you frame your strategy and how you can communicate this throughout your organisation.
We call this a Strategy on a Page – a simple high-level plan showing your critical strategic priorities and how you aim to deliver these.
It includes:
- Company Mission/Vision
- Themes
- Strategic Projects
- Measures of Success
You can’t deliver on your strategic plans if you aren’t crystal clear on what exactly you want to achieve and, in turn, what areas of your business you need to focus on to achieve those aims.
This also serves as a powerful communication tool to launch a strategy to your team, align them, and regularly communicate progress against the plan via quarterly action planning updates.
It also captures your company values (the culture you are creating) and capabilities/competencies that you will see as the foundations of your strategy.
Using Richard Rumelt’s approach from Good Strategy – Bad Strategy (2011), the following method applies:
- Undertake a diagnosis asking these three questions:
- What is the problem?
- What is the situation?
- What is the story diagnosis of the problem and its story? Unless you understand this, you are not addressing a strategy
- Given the diagnosis of the situation, what themes or guiding policies should now apply?
- What therefore are the coherent actions you will take?
- The coherent actions are the manifestation of the guiding policies in action
- If the actions are not consistent with the guiding policies, don’t carry them out as they won’t address the diagnosis of the problem
- What are the measures of success?
- How will you know you have got there, and how will you track progress?
Remember, scale is a journey, but that journey must start with a clear strategy if you want to Go Next Level.
You can download our FREE strategy on a page template here.
About Ellivate
Ellivate is the expert partner helping organisations and their go-to-market team’s scale.
Our powerhouse team of industry experts – with a combined 60 years of experience across the fintech, corporate and technology spaces – will work alongside your business to achieve your goals.
We have a shared passion for working with businesses to achieve rapid growth and apply an authentic, human layer of expertise that addresses the real challenges and concerns at the heart of your business.
We will work alongside you as a trusted and expert partner. We get in the trenches and ensure every solution is embedded within your business.
