Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Louw Barnardt: Business strategy – five steps on how to succeed in the new year

[Bulls n Bears]

 <http://www.nedbank.co.zw/> 

 

 

 

Strategy – that intangible part of business planning. The right one could
see your business double in the new year. The wrong one, or none at all,
could see you miss out on the big time, writes Louw Barnardt.

Some 11,000 start-ups are founded every hour around the world. But very few
of these manage to successfully scale up. A reason for that is business
strategy – or the lack thereof.

Founder and management teams need to carefully contemplate and craft solid
long-, medium- and short-term strategies to put and keep their business on
the path of success. Failure to do so has been the demise of start-ups and
giant corporations alike.

Can you state your company’s strategy in a sentence and is it driving
growth within your business? Strategy will determine the direction in which
your business heads and will keep your whole leadership team on the same
page. These are our five core steps on how to set an actionable business
strategy for the year ahead:


1. Gain insight from your leadership team


The first step is to make sure that you cover your own blind spots by
gaining insights from your whole leadership team. They are the ones on the
ground with clients, product, operations and the likes, seeing and hearing
things that the founders may miss.

Asking questions like “what has gone well this last year” and “what has
not” offer deep insight on your current strongest and weakest business
areas. Asking them to “name one thing that we should stop doing right now”
and “one thing we should start doing right now” gives you great input on the
key areas of opportunity and weakness in the business. Build a short
questionnaire and gain honest feedback from your team to direct and expand
your thoughts on what is important for the next phase of business growth.


2. Setting the vision straight


Vision directs strategy. Without the right vision in place, it’s impossible
to set a good strategic direction. Articulating the vision consists of clear
and cemented company core values, an easy to unpack company purpose
statement and a clear brand promise. Having these in place, visible and
discussed often helps the whole team to remain aligned.

Lastly, set a big, long-term goal or vision for the company. I’m talking
twenty, twenty-five years out – a lifetime’s work. Something that would blow
your mind if you can achieve it. From here it becomes easier to craft a
five-year strategic direction for the business.


3. Mind the trends


With technology and markets moving faster than ever, watching trends
globally, locally and in your industry is key to avoid becoming irrelevant
and to ensure competitive advantage in the future. Spend some time with your
management team unpacking all the trends that can impact your company in
years to come. This often lays out big opportunities to take advantage of
current trends or red flags that you need to avoid by pivoting your business
in the years to come to avoid falling behind.


4. Clarify before you build


You will now have team feedback, company vision and industry trend analysis
on the table. The next thing to do is to get clear about a few critical
things. Define what the “words you own” are. Define – in painful detail –
what your core customer looks like. Name your key differentiating activities
that give you a big competitive advantage in the market. These will be the
last part of what you need to set this year’s strategy.


5. Execute – 90-day planning


Now it’s time to put strategy into action. From all of the above, try to
state your core strategy for the year in one sentence. Then get practical –
set up a 90-day plan for the first quarter that includes all of the key
action points that you need to achieve in the first quarter in order to have
you on track towards achieving this year’s goals. This naturally needs to
fit into the bigger picture of what you want to achieve in the next five
years as well as your life’s work of achieving that massive twenty-plus-year
vision for the business.


In summary


Now you and your team can decide on who takes what responsibility, giving
three to five big quarterly goals to each management team member. At the end
of the first quarter, review how it has gone and set goals for the next 90
days. Following this approach to long term and short term strategy will make
sure that your team is focused, aligned and working on the right things at
the right time. You will be on your way towards your best year ever.

Africa needs scale-ups to help solve its economic growth and job creation
challenges and the social issues caused by them. Scaling up with the right
strategies requires discipline and focus. Set your strategy straight and
contribute to the business and entrepreneurship wave that is driving our
continent forward. Africa needs you! Now go out there and smash those new
year goals!

Louw Barnardt CA(SA) is the founder of Outsourced CFO, a CFO and cloud
accounting services company that helps scale-up companies navigate
growth.--Howwemaditinafrica



Louw Barnardt

 

Invest Wisely!

Bulls n Bears 

 

Telephone:    <tel:%2B263%204%202927658> +263 4 2927658

Cellphone:      <tel:%2B263%2077%20344%201674> +263 77 344 1674

Alt. Email:    <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> info at bulls.co.zw  

Website:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AF
QjCNH8LYgdY55h-XKseuM8Kpr-JKdfhQ> www.bulls.co.zw 

Blog:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw%2Fblog&sa=D&sntz=1
&usg=AFQjCNFoIy6F9IXAiYnSoPSgWDYsr8Sqtw> www.bulls.co.zw/blog

Twitter:                  @bullsbears2010

LinkedIn:               Bulls n Bears Zimbabwe

Facebook:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBullsBearsZimba
bwe&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGhb_A5rp4biV1dGHbgiAhUxQqBXA>
www.facebook.com/BullsBearsZimbabwe

Skype:         Bulls.Bears 



 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 107623 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listmail.bulls.co.zw/pipermail/bulls/attachments/20190103/3d480264/attachment-0001.bin>