The Strategy System

Let’s go back to basics for a minute and remember Stephen Covey’s first habit of highly effective people: Be Proactive.

This means recognising that within your circle of concern – is your circle of influence. Being effective means focussing your precious energy on what you can influence; and forgetting the rest. 

Or to put it another way – don’t waste your energy on what you can’t control. Put it to use on what you can influence.  

If you’re a business leader – what you can’t control is what happens in the broader social, political or economic context. But what you can control is how your organisation is set up to respond. 

The Strategy System is your process for strategy creation and execution that ensures your organisation remains adaptive and responsive in your chosen market. 

The Strategy System aligns the whole team to work collaboratively. It involves: 

• • creating a one-page Business Plan that is clear and actionable 
  • cascading goals through to teams and individuals through alignment sessions 
  • evaluating performance to review progress and to reflect on opportunities for continuous improvement. 

The one-page Business Plan is central to this system. Keeping your Business Plan simple, clear and actionable is a discipline in creating simplicity from complexity. But the creation of the plan is only half the story. For a plan to be executed, it needs to be reviewed annually and revisited quarterly as part of your business planning and budget cycle. 

The one-page Business Plan is two sides of an A4 page. 

The front page outlines your purpose, values, vision, pillars, goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). The back page lists the priorities driving outcomes in each pillar and the teams within the business who must collaborate to deliver these projects. 

Each team member’s KPIs and priorities cascade directly from this plan, and each quarter their progress is tracked in team planning workshops to reflect, reset and reprioritise for the quarter ahead. This process allows the business to remain agile, adjusting the plan as the market shifts while remaining steadfast in your company mission. 

The process allows the whole team to have input into the strategy and how they can achieve their own plans. This creates engagement, ownership and accountability throughout the organisation. 

Each quarter, the CEO reports back to the business on performance against the goals and targets outlined in the Business Plan; sharing achievements against each pillar and highlighting individuals who demonstrated outstanding effort for reaching key milestones. He or she also communicates their perspective on focus areas for the upcoming quarter. 

The Strategy System fosters transparency and rapid adaptation, resulting in: 

• • clarity of purpose 
  • goal alignment 
  • leadership accountability.
    

To find out more – look out for my book Purpose, Passion, & Performance: How systems for leadership, strategy and culture drive the 3Ps of high performing organisations – available 30 October. Or contact me to ask how I can help you implement a system for strategy in your organisation.