A few years ago I was asked by a marketing person what I did for a living, I replied that I was a strategy consultant.
“That’s a big word.” they replied. What, Consultant?” I said.
“No, strategy. No one understands what it is.” I think that what he meant was that he didn’t understand. I suppose it’s a bit like thinking Sales and Marketing are the same thing because we say them together.
Strategy is arranging, managing and controlling the many, many things you do and have in your business that make your business unique & successful.
I have heard strategy likened to a sound equaliser when using it to create a balanced sound – think George Martin and The Beatles.
Strategy cannot necessarily be described in one single statement. Many people attempt to do this by describing their strategy as “doubling sales in 5 years” or “achieving a gross margin of 45%”. These are actually targets or measures within your business, not strategy.
I like to break the understanding of a company’s strategy into a number of distinct areas.
These are style, operations, sales & marketing (there we go again!) and finance. Of course these will all have subsets such as people, products and premises and these subsets will appear multiple times.
To understand strategy you have to understand how the component parts of your business fit together.