Category Archives: Positioning Strategy

Getting the best out of what you have

Cognitive Strategy, Innovation, Leadership, Planning Strategy, Positioning Strategy, Strategy

Have you thought about the resources and capabilities that you have on hand, and how well you are using them?

Have you thought about how these aspects of your organisation, whether not-for-profit or a business, can help you stay in the game and be successful?

Well, when planning your strategies perhaps reflect on your own unique set of resources and capabilities using the following four attributes:

  1. value
  2. rarity
  3. imitability
  4. organization

Value. What is the value that you have? For you must have resources and capabilities of value in order to create a proposition that customers will pay for.  This value that you have must be capable of exploiting an opportunity or seeing off a potential threat. Or, on the other hand, is this resource or capability hindering your ability to respond to opportunities or threats? That is, is it a weakness?

Rarity. Do you have at your disposal an asset that is rare? That not many others have? Perhaps you own a particular segment of the market. Perhaps some of the talents that your staff have are quite unique. What about a technology that you use in your processes that not many others have.

Imitability. How easy is it for others to copy what you have? Think about the processes you have, the way your goods are produces, or the particular value that you add to your services. Can what you do be easily imitated by current or potential competitors?

Organisation. Are you geared to taking full advantage of the resources and capabilities that you have? Think about your policies and procedures. Do they stifle or do they give assistance to exploiting the value, the rarity and the imitability of what you have at hand?

For sustaining competitive advantage is about ensuring all four of these attributes are kept in strategic focus.

Dellium Advisory
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Strategic Planning is Essential for Better Performance

Cognitive Strategy, Cultural Strategy, Design Strategy, Entrepreneurial Strategy, Environmental Strategy, Planning Strategy, Positioning Strategy, Power Strategy, Strategic Planning, Strategy

Over the decades of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s there were a mixed bag of academic studies regarding the usefulness of strategic planning. Some studies poured cold water on the notion that strategic planning could improve the performance of a firm, others were hearty in their endorsement.

But time and again in recent years, analysis has shown that indeed bringing direction to an organisation through the process of strategic planning has indeed brought benefits.

Aspects improved include:

  • sales
  • profit
  • productivity
  • returns on investments
  • employee engagement
  • even the success ratio of new product development

The long-term implication from each of these studies is that if an organisation (whether for-profit or not-for-profit) thinks about its future and puts some resources into planning its direction (where it is, where it wants to go, and how it will get there) it will not only survive but thrive.

For more, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, or review my IT-centric blog.

Strategic Planning is more than Gap Analysis

Cognitive Strategy, Cultural Strategy, Design Strategy, Entrepreneurial Strategy, Environmental Strategy, Planning Strategy, Positioning Strategy, Power Strategy, Strategic Planning, Strategy

Strategic planning is more than just gap analysis. What’s more, there is no single accepted definition of what it is.

Some say that its a top down approach, a rational approach. Others say its fluid, that the macro environment is the major determinant. Still others have a organization-centric resource-only based view toward strategic planning.

What’s your view? What’s your approach?

Is yours & your organisation’s approach to strategic more of a cerebral, formalised, top-down. Or is it more entrepreneurial. That its the visionary leader who “will take us there”.

So, given then that the word “strategy” is derived from the Greek word “Strategia”, meaning “art of war”, the implication is that its part art, part science. Part feel, part intentional design.

And given that strategy has to do with the direction of your organisation & its scope of activities, what are the questions you need to be asking? What are the timelines you are talking about? How much information do you need for you decision making process?

What are your values?

What then is your vision?

For, it all flows from your vision

 

For more, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, or review my IT-centric blog.