Start with Knowing Where You Are
Strategy is a about making and leveraging new beginnings from wherever you sitting right now. The very nature of strategy is unique to who or what you are. In other words, it’s not a plan that is go grand it good apply to anyone.
Statements like these that I’ve read on too many corporate strategic powerpoints are not strategies …
- Become a thought leader in our space.
- Raise our brand awareness.
- Leverage our customers to own more market share.
These are broadly written descriptions of possible goals.
A strategy is a practical system to advance achievement. True strategy focused on leveraging opportunity consistently and fluently in the direction of growth.
Strategy is uniquely formed from knowing where we stand and what we own.
Strategy begins by understanding where you stand and bringing all of who and what you are to where you want to go.
Knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive. Who’d want to follow you if you don’t know where you’re going to go?
So, to get get from here to there, you need to have a goal — a vision on the horizon that you’re willing to commit your best resources to achieving. You’ll need a team of great people to support you — belief and influence will attract the best people to participate in your mission to reach that vision.
But first, you have to know where you are before you go.
Getting from here to there is impossible if you don’t know where here is.
Your unique position defines how to leverage strategic opportunities that yours alone.
The Five Questions to Leverage Your Unique Position
To build a true strategy a person or business has to begin with where you stand and a clear picture of where you want to go. It’s hard to get there from here, if you haven’t figured out where here is. These five questions will help define your unique strategic position.
- What drives you to your mission and your goal? Know why you do what you do. No person, no business accomplishes great things alone. Frodo had his friends. Batman did too. Your mission clarifies your position and the field on which you’re playing. It’s the higher calling that attracts the right team who want to move things forward with you.
- What do you already own? The strategic of owning nothing can mean the lower risk of nothing to lose. Do you have a spark, a spirit, a culture, a process, a system, a model, a location, a concept, a team that works for you?
- What position on the playing field do you uniquely hold by why of the ground, the talents and the values that are your own? If your back is against the wall, no one can sneak up behind you. Distract, Divide, Decide the rules that work for you. Choose the most natural rule of opposites put it to work for you. If the industry cares about sales, care about follow through. If the industry cares about flash and glitz go minimalist. Make having your back against the wall the new the black — the envied position to choose.
- What is your role that serves others better than anyone else can? Be driven to make nothing about you. Nothing beats listening to the people who love you to help them with their dearest quest. Use your position to get to know who loves you and to raise the best of them closer to their goals.
- How will you combine these to decide how every competitve offer is irrelevant? What does your team bring that no other team can offer — that no other team could reproduce? What’s the WOW of just interacting with you?
Being good at execution or at picking a direction won’t get us to that winning goal. Understanding the strategic advantages of every position, even the worst one you might imagine, that allow us to make the small adjustments and leverage the advantages that the folks who need the “sure winner,” who can’t risk, can’t see, or can’t move fast enough to leverage. Knowing and constantly reassessing your position is as important as knowing your goal.
Have you found the leverage in your position yet?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
