How to Audit Your Strategy
Have you ever felt like your organization is out of whack? The company is growing but everyone feels misaligned. You have momentum but it’s slowing because no one is completely sure where you’re going.
At this point, leaders often audit various aspects of the brand to evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Tactics can include customer journey audits, the competitor matrix, focus group testing, loyalist research, market research, ethnography, and more.
While these tools are valuable, I would suggest beginning with broader audit of the organization's strategy. If the following questions are difficult than a deeper audit will only provide confusion, not clarity.
Strategy:
Have we identified and aligned on the biggest challenge to forward progress and devised a coherent approach to overcome it?
Does our strategy support the promise we make and keep to our customers?
Have we simplified the strategy to a singular idea that can be understood throughout the organization?
People:
Can everyone, regardless of their position, verbalize the kernel of our strategy?
Does everyone understand how their role supports the strategy?
Do we hire, train, review, and reward people in alignment with our strategy?
Then, cascade down:
Internal comms: Do we over-communicate our brand promise and strategy?
Customers: Do we listen to customers to understand how our brand promise should adapt to their changing needs?
Competition: How do we further differentiate and protect our unique strengths?
Partnerships: Do our partnerships provide direct power to our strategy?
Marketing: Is our promise clearly positioned and communicated in the marketplace?
Operations: Do we enforce standards that prioritize alignment and service to the brand promise?
Processes: Do we over-invest in processes critical to sustaining a competitive advantage (and under-invest in the rest)?
Finance: Do we plan, budget, and allocate to the functions best aligned with our strategy?
Expansion: Do the acquisitions we consider provide more than an additive effect to our strength?
Measurement: Do we measure our performance according to metrics uniquely aligned with our strategy?
Rubber; meet road.
Reviewing this list, you should see it’s really an exercise of two simple questions…
What’s our strategy?
How does {any given decision} align to our strategy?
Red alert 🚨
If it’s difficult to articulate how your strategy effects any department, structure, or decision; then likely your strategy is a goal or wishlist and nothing more. This short article on Barnes and Noble showcases how a strong strategy can drive clear decisions (and ultimately results).
It’s easy to continue with “business as usual” even when things are a bit dysfunctional. But the speed of today’s market demands more from organizations to remain successful.
So, what’s your organization’s strategy? Does it instantly pop into mind? Does it make decision making easier? If not: seek clarity. You’ll be rewarded for it.
3 ways I can help:
Brand Strategy: Build your brand holistically to create favorability with your target market.
Brand Identity: Confidently market, internally and externally, with a toolbox of visual and verbal assets that make your brand distinct.
Brand Marketing: Establish a distinct relationship with your current and future customers.
