What is strategy development?

 

What is Strategy Development?

Strategy development means identifying the key strategic goals and actions that will help you achieve your goals. It is about choosing the best way forward taking into account your current situation and resources.

 

Steps for Strategy Development

1. Clear goals: Start by clearly defining your goals. Your strategic decisions should always be geared towards achieving these goals. Read more about how to formulate clear goals...
2. Current situation analysis: Use insights from your current situation analysis to identify the factors that influence your strategy.
3. SWOT analysis: Conduct a SWOT analysis to understand your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This will help you formulate a strategy that builds on your strengths and takes into account challenges and opportunities.
4. Strategic options: Generate different strategic options based on your analysis and SWOT analysis. Be creative and explore different possibilities.
5. Prioritisation: Evaluate and prioritise your strategic options. What are the most relevant and effective options to achieve your goals?
6. Develop action plans: For each strategic option, create detailed action plans that describe what needs to be done, who is responsible and the timeframe for implementation.
7. Resource allocation: Identify and allocate the resources needed to implement your strategies. This can include people, funding and technology.
8. Risk management: Evaluate the risks associated with your strategies and develop plans to manage them if they arise. Read more about risk management...
9. Communication: Communicate your strategy clearly to your team and other stakeholders.

Read more about what strategy really is...

 

Example: Strategy development

1. Let's use an example to illustrate strategy development. Suppose you run a restaurant and aim to increase your turnover by 20% in the coming year.
2. Goal: Increase turnover by 20% within one year.
   Strategic option 1: Expand the menu and offer more healthy options to attract a wider customer base.
   Strategic option 2: Launch a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the restaurant and attract more customers.
3. Prioritisation: After carefully evaluating both options, you decide that launching the marketing campaign is the most effective strategy to reach your goal.
4. Action plan: You develop an action plan for the marketing campaign, including budget, timeline and marketing channels.
5. Resource allocation: You allocate the necessary resources, including staff and budget, to implement the marketing campaign.
6. Risk management: you identify potential risks, such as the campaign not producing the expected results, and develop a plan to manage them.

By following these steps, you have developed a strategy geared towards achieving your goal of increasing turnover by 20% within a year.

Summary

Strategy development is a key part of the planning process that helps you choose the best path to achieve your goals. By clarifying goals, analysing your current situation, generating strategic options, prioritising and developing action plans, you will be better equipped to drive your plan forward. In the next chapter, we will explore how you can implement and monitor your strategy.