Strategy Equals Hard Choices

The purpose of a developing a good strategy is that it clearly shows where you are aiming to be and sets out the steps you need to take to get there. By setting out this destination and the path to it, it’s then down to you to stay on that path. To do that, you have to make (often hard) choices. You have to choose your ideal market niche(s), who to target in that niche and what you can deliver in order to give you the return you need to hit milestones along the path to this destination.

Your strategy compels you to define exactly what you will do and for whom you will do it. As well as choosing what you will do, you also need to make the often-harder choice of what you won’t do. In order to go after a particular niche, what trade-offs must you make? Which prospects do you ignore?

A good strategy helps you focus….

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, made a choice to offer well-designed furniture that almost anyone could afford but which still had a high quality look and feel. He decided to sacrifice many smaller outlets in favour of a few large out-of-town sites. He sacrificed having highly trained sales teams in favour of self-service. Instead of trying to please anyone looking to furnish their home, he narrowed down his product offering to a certain style and budget and hence a certain type of client.

I made a tough decision at the beginning of the year. You may have noticed that I haven’t written a blog post for a few months. That’s because at the end of last year I developed a new 3-year strategy. The first major milestone of this strategy was to write a book.

So, that’s what I did, knowing that to do it I needed to stay focused and spend my days writing and not engaging with new clients or sending out anything from Anchorage. I launched the Kindle version of the book on Amazon a few days ago, which is a very exciting and scary prospect. Yesterday I saw my first review, which, much to my joy and relief was very positive.

The other reason for taking that arguably drastic decision to become a temporary recluse was that, with the book I was going to launch a new brand – Your Business Foundation. And that’s what I did and which you’re hopefully reading this blog post from.

Essentially, through Anchorage and a system I developed, I’ve been helping businesses, from technology companies to care homes and organisations such as charities and colleges, establish a strong foundation upon which to build and achieve their aims.

Through Anchorage I’ll continue to provide hands-on help to larger organisations and the new plan is to help more businesses succeed by developing products and tools that they can use to develop their own solid business foundation. This will be done under my new brand and my book, Your Business Foundation, is the first product.

This strategy will take my business to a whole new level for which I’m very excited. But I knew that it also meant that I would temporarily need to shut myself away and lose potential short-term business opportunities. My strategy shows what I need to do to get my business to where I want it to be in 3 years time and has helped me make that tough decision to spend the first quarter of the year focused on the book and the new brand.

Those businesses that lack a solid strategy lack certainty in their purpose and direction. As such, they’re unable to make these hard choices. A good strategy, will give you the certainty and conviction you need to stay on the path you’ve set.