Strategy is important when you’re running a business – it’s what ensures all your shorter term, individual decisions are pulling together to create the brand you want, the business you want and the future success you want.
There’s no one size fits all strategy, however, and it’s important to review regularly to make sure your strategy is the right one for you, delivering not just results, but the right kind of results.
There are boutique consulting firms, London based and in other cities around the UK who can help you take a look at your strategy, but before you open a dialogue with them, it’s worth doing some research to help you understand the fundamentals and think about whether your strategy is right for you and right for your business.
Changing Circumstances
When you’re reviewing your strategy, something it’s important to review in tandem is the circumstances you’re doing business in. If you created a strategy and then, several years later, found yourself doing business on the cusp of a recession, then your customers or clients will be making radically different spending decisions, and your priorities need to change to match. The reverse is also true: if you were doing business in a small, fringe field and find it rapidly becomes of much wider interest then you’re denying yourself opportunities by not reworking your strategy to apply to a much more mainstream business.
The same applies to your personal life. If you started a business single, with your full focus on building your brand, but have since found a partner, started a family, developed health issues or begun caring for family members who have, that strategy is now tearing you in two.
Strategy or Aims?
It’s important to understand whether what you want to do is change the strategy you’re using to achieve your aims for your business or change the aims themselves. Again, if your personal circumstances have changed, then you might find yourself wanting radically different things from your business. Changing your strategy but trying to achieve the same things is not going to achieve the new balance that you need.
Long or Short Term Changes?
It’s also important to identify the difference between the long term of strategy review and the short term of tactical decisions. Strategy is meant to work over multiple years or even decades. It’s a high level document. We can see the shortcomings of getting too short term with big strategic decisions in the number of companies who pivoted themselves around NFTs, a financial/art trend which burned itself out within two years!
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