Delayed, Derailed, Deleted – What happened to my strategy?

The world as we know it, changed profoundly during the past six months. It will serve no purpose to try and repeat the obvious and I am sure everyone reading this, will have a very personal story to share.

For some of us, our strategy, so well defined in January 2020, had to be put on hold, for some, it came completely off the rails, and for some, it was completely deleted and declared null and void!! Very few of us could have foreseen the events that unfolded and very few of us had a contingency plan to deal with the events and radical changes that came about.

So now that we know that our world has been turned upside down and we will need to re-focus, the question is how do we, in this new world, go about finding the vital information to assist us in getting our strategy back on track.

People often associate strategy with big corporations, but the reality is that we all have a strategy, not always documented, but that does not mean that they do not exist.

We should use the items that sets us apart, as key inputs for the way forward. These items may include the data that we have, the processes we have developed and the customer interaction we have established. The next step would be to rank these items in terms of highest business impact should it be changed, and then see how and what we can change.

It is quite clear that technology, in all its forms, will have to be included in all our future planning and may vary from the basic elements such as working from home for a large number of employees, to the systems and process we are using or which we had to implement as part of our adaption to the new way of work.

Whether our strategy was just paused, came off the rails, or completely obliterated, we need to get it back on the table and visible, even if the future still seems unsure at this stage.

Now is a good time to engage with your suppliers and partners, share your challenges and vision, and ask for them to contribute to your strategy!! We have seen many cases where organizations engaged with technology suppliers, that yielded excellent results in a short time, whilst laying the foundation for the organization to innovate, reimagine and reframe.