When you hear the word strategy, what comes to your mind? I bet you suddenly felt uneasy. It is because people make strategy harder than it needs to be.

The problem is because business people always associate strategy with such tools like environmental scans, SWOT analyses, business impact analysis, risk analysis, financial modeling, and so on and so forth. From these words alone, it is enough to make you puke your guts out. Other people get into trouble because they think it is all about the broad, conceptual, future-oriented, big picture stuff. Others think that strategy is all about changing paradigms.

The reality is that strategy is all of the above and more. It is about knowing that you cannot develop a strategy without the aid of the tools. Simply put, you cannot do a good job of developing strategy without a complete and thorough understanding of the variables involved.

Developing a strategy is not as difficult as it sounds. It is actually a lot easier than you thought it would be. Try to answer these interlinked questions and you will surely be guided in developing your own business strategy.

1. What are the broad aspirations of the organization? This is essentially the most basic question that anyone has to consider. There must be an understanding about the goals or objectives of the organization. To get 30% of the market share, or to increase profits by 30%. These are common goals but which are concrete and measurable. The aspirations have to be defined. They have to be clear and measurable. You just cannot say that you want to be a market leader or an industry leader because you will never know how you are faring. Defining the goals and objectives of the company in broad but measurable terms is more important to you and the business

2. In our chosen field, how do we intend to win against the competitors?

Again, this is another basic question that would define our strategy. If our objective is to increase market shares by 30%, then how do you propose to achieve this? This is ultimately the path towards the oasis or the fruit-bearing tree, if you want to be visual with this point. How do you propose to go to your destination? There are various paths, as you may well know.

The choice is yours on which path to thread. You can do this by saturating the market with your marketing collaterals as in your print brochures or radio airtime or magazine features. You may also want to explore holding events to launch a product. Whatever path you pursue, what is important is for you to continually assess the success of your strategy.

3. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain your advantage in the chosen path?

In order to sustain efforts to achieve your company’s aspirations, list down all the necessary capabilities i.e. human resources, equipment, material resources, finances. It is important that you know what you need to achieve the goals. Compare it to a boat. You would not go anywhere without oars, would you? Better than the oars, you will be able to reach your destination faster with sails. However, if you really want to go full throttle, nothing beats 100 horsepower engine. Therefore, if you decide to do it by brochure printing for example, your resources should allow you to do this on a sustained basis.

Again, having a strategy is not as difficult as it seems. You just need to develop your guidelines is stick to it for you to succeed in whatever path you choose to thread.