The What's Next? Process for Creating A Winning Competitive Strategy
Motivation is the single most important attribute of all. When it's lacking, almost everything falls apart. New strategy concepts, idea generation, and overall success will be lost without a firm foundation in actually being productive and working towards your goals. So you need to decide what your next step should be and act on these plans with passion.
Our great friend and fellow creative consultant, Steve Brown from Creative Consulting International , has created a simple process for helping you form a competitive strategy that can help propel your business forward in record time.
This process is called, The What's Next? Process for Creating A Winning Competitive Strategy. The system works like this:
1. writing down ideas from the graphic above, it should be a mixture of ideas from your business and your personal life as well as some outside influences that have influenced you personally and professionally. (don't worry I will list the 8 elements in this article)
2. write down everything that you wrote and combine these elements into relevant themes (just like in math or science)
3. now you must research each theme to find out why it is important to your business or personal life.
4. now you must write down how you will incorporate these elements into your life and apply it to your business
5. now that you have done that, you must research and find out what the best combination of ideas and themes will be for you to use for your business
6. finally, now that you have done all of this, it is time to take action. Just because it is there in front of you does not mean that it is real. You will have to work on this everyday with passion in order to get results from anything that we do. It's all about the action…just like Mark Cuban says, "It's not what I do once in a while, but what I do everyday. That achieves results".
7. there you go! Your own personal and customized strategy is now created with no additional time or expense.
Now, let's take a look at these eight steps to help guide you through the process of developing your own personalized strategy.
8 Elements of a Winning Strategy:
1. Current Business and Personal Situation (you) – first your must figure out where you are in both your business and personal life. You should discover what is working, what isn't working, where you want to go, who you are now vs who you want to be in the future, what has motivated and inspired you before etc… this is the first step because it will help develop the rest of your strategy
2. The Ideal New Situation (I) – its time to figure out what you want to be "when" you are older. The ideal situation is based on your best interests, desires and overall goals
3. Why This Situation Is Important (W) – the reason for this situation is the same as why you are already in it currently. It should make sense to your current business and personal situation
4. Who, What and Why Will You Use To Achieve Your Goals (W2) – this is an important step because it will help decide how you will achieve your new situation (I). It not only tells you about the tools that you are going to use, but also the people that will be influencing you.
5. How Will You Be Different (W2) – in order to achieve the best results, you must make sure that you are different from the competition or anyone else because this is going to help your business become successful.
6. What Do You Need To Learn and Who Can Help (W3) – every new situation, goal and strategy we create should be easily achievable by applying our knowledge base. This will help us understand what we need to learn, whether it is fundamentally or technically.
7. How Will You Use This Knowledge (W4) – this is a step that we can use to make sure that we are using our knowledge in the most effective way possible. We should not be taking the knowledge and using it in a way that wastes our time and resources.
8. What's The Next Step (for you and your business)? (W4) – this is the last step that will set us on track to achieving our goals. It's very important to take the time and effort to create this step because it will help us stay accountable and on track with achieving the goals that we set in our strategy.
Follow these steps exactly as they are outlined above, and you will discover that nothing is faster or more effective than a customized strategy.
Steve Brown is one of my closest friends outside of the design community (check out his blog at: http://stevebrowncreative.blogspot.com/ ). He has helped me tremendously in my career by taking the time to show me things that I haven't learned within my formal education, all thanks to practicing good design every day.
In 2009 at the i3 Summit, Steve Brown presented a talk called: "The Creative Strategist: How Innovation Can Help Your Business"
He also wrote a great post about why you need to learn how to create strategic thinking and imagination in your business. (check out his article here: http://stevebrowncreative.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-you-need-to-learn-how-to-create.html )
You can also check out his newest article on creating a unique strategy for your business at: http://stevebrowncreative.blogspot.com/2010/05/the-whatnextprocessforcreatingwinning.html
For more information about Steve Brown and his excellent work, please feel free to check out his website at: www.creativeconsultinginternational.com
Thanks for reading my article! Please feel free to leave a comment below…your feedback is important to me! Also, please let me know what you think of my new design! (it's all thanks to Steve Brown!)
About the Author:
David Maister is an internationally respected consultant and author in the area of strategic human resource management. The New York Times summarizes his main contribution as 'Maister has patiently promoted the idea that business and companies are best run with a human touch.' His latest book is called: "The Trusted Advisor" . It is available from Amazon in paperback or kindle format.
You can visit his website at: http://strategichr.com/
Kindle Version: " The Trusted Advisor" (Paperback and Kindle edition) (requires Amazon account)
Follow him on Twitter: @davidmaister Facebook : David Maister LinkedIn : David Maister Google+ : David Maister
Amazon Author's Page: David Maister Amazon Author's Page Link: davidmaister.com/amazon Amazon KINDLE Edition of "The Trusted Advisor" (paperback and Kindle) https://www.amazon.
Conclusion:
In Conclusion: Developing an effective strategy doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. In less than an hour you can create a customized strategy that will help you get better results for your business. All it takes is a little bit of imagination, knowledge and action.
Get Your Personalized Strategy Create Your Own Personal Strategy: http://strategyworks.net/strategyformula.html Want To Do The Work For Free?
Do The Research Study 1: Harvard Business Review 2009 article on strategy development steps http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.