Strategic Direction

Strategic Direction: Why is it important for business?

Strategic direction is critical to propelling companies forward and enacting meaningful change. It helps create a strong structure and determines what each department, as well as each individual employee, is responsible for.

It gives your organisation clear purpose and objectives, and ensures that everyone knows how they are helping to achieve them.

Have you got your strategic direction right?

Strategic direction consists of determining the core processes and values that position you to succeed – your mission, vision, daily operations, how you bring your team into alignment, and what you do to generate positive morale.

Strategic analysis, including management tools such as SWOT and MOST Analysis, helps teams, departments, and organisations get from where they are now to where they want to be, unified with a strong direction and common goals.

Why businesses without a strong strategic direction are more likely to fail

According to Investopedia the 4 main reasons businesses fail are:

  1. Financing Hurdles
  2. Inadequate Management
  3. Ineffective Business Planning
  4. Marketing Mishaps

All of these areas should be covered in your Business Strategy which needs to be reviewed regularly. Monthly for big businesses and quarterly for small businesses.

The kind of scrutiny and reflection you need to develop your strategic direction in the first place means you would be aware of the strengths and weaknesses internal to your company and the opportunities and threats external to your company.

Using MOST Analysis you can create an actionable business strategy that drills right down into the tactics that individuals need to action in order to support the strategies that in turn support the objectives that help the business achieve its mission.

Keeping this under review means you can more easily spot when things are working or not working and take remedial action in a timely manner.

Need help with your strategic direction?

Strategic direction is also the single most important thing that board advisors help businesses with.

Once business strategy or corporate strategy has been decided upon, your business can then move into planning.

If you would like to discuss how Boardroom Advisors could support you in developing your strategic direction contact us to speak with your local Regional Director.

Resources to help with your strategic direction

1. The Business Strategy Toolkit

The Business Strategy Toolkit will help you create a new business strategy or review your existing strategy to ensure you have the best plan in place for your business growth.

This free resource includes a video tutorial on how to use all the tools in the kit and how to develop your strategic direction for your business.

Business Strategy Toolkit

2. The Essential Guide to Scale-up Challenges

This Essential Guide to Scale-up Business Challenges eBook provides an easy reference to all the different challenges you are likely to encounter as your business grows. It’s designed to help reflect on each challenge and provides suggestions for how to tackle them and get support.

The Essential Guide to Scale Up Challenges

Learn about how to overcome the challenges when scaling up your business

DOWNLOAD E-BOOK

3. The Scale-up Growth Diagnostic

The Scale-up Growth Diagnostic asks 32 questions across the topics of Strategy, Sales and Marketing to provide a score for each section and an overall growth score. Your report will be packed with recommendations based on your scores and includes a priority list for low scoring areas.

Each of your Board members can take the diagnostic to see if you are all aligned. You can also use it to benchmark so you can make and measure improvements.

The Scale-up Growth Diagnostic

Complete the Growth Diagnostic to get your Personalised Scorecard and Priority list

TAKE THE GROWTH DIAGNOSTIC NOW

Other strategic challenges you may be facing:

❖   Business Planning – have you got a business plan that would impress potential investors? Make sure your business plan includes all the essential elements you need so you don’t lose out on great opportunities. A weak business plan will cost you wasted time as well as potentially missing out on timely cash injections.

❖   Business Growth – do you have the strategies and tactics in place that you need to scale-up your business? Having a well thought out and clear growth strategy means you can drive your sales and profits in the right direction and scale-up with confidence.

❖  Monitoring Performance – having measures of success in place is essential to the success of your growth strategy. Using hard numbers in your mission means you can work backwards to see exactly what changes you need to make to take the steps you need to achieve your goals.

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