The more chaotic the world becomes, the more our tendency is to "do whatever it takes." Unfortunately, that mindset leads to wasted time, energy and money. An effective strategy provides freedom within a structure that drives better results.

What Is A Strategy?
A strategy is a guideline that channels all of the decisions and activities within an organization along the same path toward achieving the organization's vision and fulfilling its mission.

Organizations can have more than one strategy, but it is very important that the strategies work in concert with one another toward a common set of outcomes. Multiple strategies are effective if they act as multiple rivers flowing into the same body of water.

Key Aspects Of Any Effective Strategy
An effective strategy meets these five parameters:

Connect To A Clearly Defined Outcome
First decide what you want to achieve, then decide the path you will move down to achieve it. The process goes like this:

• Establish a mission or purpose for your group.
• Establish a vision of what success would look like.
• Establish a strategy of what path to move down for fulfilling the mission and achieving the vision.
• Clarify tactics of how to move down the path.
• Determine goals for measuring progress.
• Establish roles and responsibilities.

Significantly Impact Customers
To deliver any meaningful outcome, the strategy must guide internal resources to impact customer needs. The question becomes, "Which customer need are we seeking to impact and what path will allow us to make the greatest impact? Should we focus on our product/service quality, system of production, technological capacity, marketing, distribution, or organizational size and growth? "

Define Boundaries

Effective organizations decide which strategies to pursue AND which ones not to pursue. They clarify what lies inside their boundary AND what lies outside of it. Then they stay disciplined at focusing on implementing the strategy they have selected.

Cut Across All Levels
An ineffective strategy remains stuck in a corporate boardroom. Executives label it as "The Strategy Of The Month," and people make fun of it behind closed doors. An effective strategy relates clearly to every employee throughout the organization. When Fed Ex says, "Absolutely, positively overnight," they realize that effective execution requires the input of every single employee.

Simplify Decision-Making
Recently, a client of mine who is a high-ranking executive in a very large division of a major corporation told me she and her counterparts have very few decisions to make. At first this revelation seemed a bit odd to me. I assumed she had to make many decisions every day. Then it hit me between the eyes: because she made one BIG decision, she didn't need to make a bunch of little ones.

In other words, once her group had identified a specific strategy to follow toward improving business results, they then needed to have the courage to NOT jump around and make dozens of decisions that would lead the group off on meaningless tangents.

An effective strategy provides focus and direction for all members of the organization.

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