MARKETING Series: Strategic Thinking

Do you have the right attitude to sustain and grow your business? These thoughts are only a very quick guide to help begin the process. Strategy is a rich, deep, and broad topic that people spend years understanding. What is written below is a guide to help you begin the process of thinking strategically

Analyzing environments
Thinking strategically begins with the discipline to be a life-long learner. Become intentional in the reading of resources available to you. Use, for example, the company name index in the Wall Street Journal to keep abreast of those in your space. Read articles with “key words” in mind. Do you have a list of words that are important to your industry? Develop one and use it as a guide.

Use filter tools available for the Web that will sort information by key words and phrases. Review, assimilate and take learning from what is written. In some formal or informal file system, organize information about the external business environment in which you operate. Read with a highlighter. Tear out articles in your magazines and sort by topic. Develop an understanding about the players in all sectors – those providing the raw materials, or the manufacturing, those who are the suppliers, the vendors and, of course, the competitors.

• What are the opportunities that will be opening?
• What are the threats that could be impediments to your success?
• What strengths does your firm have to sustain and grow your business?
• What weakness must be addressed that could weaken your ability to respond to the market space in which you operate?

Formulating & implementing strategies
The analysis will produce the grist needed for the strategy mill and allow you to strategically address the needs of the customers in the changing marketplace. For many, the fun is formulating strategy. For successful firms, implementing the strategies drive that success. Once a strategy is agreed upon, ask yourself

• What needs to be done to move from where we are to where we want to go?
• What are the benchmarks that will help us determine progress?
• Who will be responsible for implementation?
• What is the budget for implementation?
• What does success look like?
• When will the process start? When will it end?

Responds to environmental conditions
The analysis in step one must help you become better able to respond to the opportunities and threats that are outside your control – the external environment. Of course, your internal team is important; however, the goal is to heighten your awareness about "what is happening" in the market place. What opportunities might we focus upon? What threatens our ability to sustain and/or grow our business?

Helps organizations improve performance
The purpose of strategic thinking is that your current firm will become adaptable to the external environment and make better use of your internal strengths while bolstering your internal weaknesses. Strategic thinking will:

• Improved efficiency – doing the right things that reflect best practices and assumes that there is a normalized flow of environmental factors
• Improved effectiveness – doing things right that makes maximum use of your strengths and, in some way, ameliorates your weaknesses
• Improved elasticity (flexibility) – recognizing what was “right” yesterday, may not be the “right” strategy tomorrow. Wars, famines, economic free-falls, weather etc. can dramatically change the external environment. Flex to the change. Don’t flex your values. Flex your responses to the environmental changes.

Are you developing your strategic thinking attitude? Begin today - it will shape what you read and how you read it!