Basic Strategy – Part I

By Guest Blogger Adam Bullied

First, before starting an article on basic strategy – which can be as advanced and complicated as you’d like it to be – it seems fitting to define what it actually is. I find a lot of people throw the term around, but don’t really have a grasp on what it means.

Image: istockphoto

In addition to that, it gets all mixed up because some folks, while they think they understand it, feel it’s “too fancy” for what their business needs right now.

I can say this without question – every single business in existence requires strategy. Multiple strategies. Even if you don’t consciously create them and write them down in a big document, you are executing something to get somewhere. In order to define this very broad term, let’s look to Wikipedia.

It is the process of specifying the organization’s mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs.

Wow, that’s a lot. In even simpler terms a strategy is essentially the method by which something gets done to achieve a goal or objective. The trick to strategy, like anything, is to only make it as complicated as it needs to be – and usually, that’s not very complicated at all. Especially early on, don’t feel awkward if you aren’t using things like the GE/McKinsey Matrix or Balanced Scorecards. They can help you in the sense that they are cool things to understand – but stay away from them until you are 1,000% sure the time is right to leverage them.

Basic Example

It always helps to look at an example in order understand something. Let’s say you have a goal of acquiring some milk at the grocery store. To accomplish this goal, there are several different strategies you could employ. But the strategy doesn’t only take in to account how you are going, but also how you are going to pay for it, and how you are going to get it back to your fridge at home.

Let’s look at some basic strategies to achieve that goal.

Strategy One: Vehicle, Credit. To execute this strategy, you are going to take your car to the store (and back home again after you buy the milk), and you are going to pay with your credit card. Seems like it would be the best way to go about accomplishing things. However, there are several cases to consider prior to execution.

What happens if there is a traffic jam on the way to or from the store? If you hit traffic on the way home, maybe the milk will go bad. Their credit card systems are down. The point is, the fastest strategy doesn’t always mean it’s the best strategy. Quality takes time and care to deliver.

Strategy Two: Walk, Cash. So let’s say you are going to walk to the store and pay with cash when you get there. Seems like a pretty sure thing. You know you will make it without hitting traffic – it’s just going to take you longer to arrive. And all stores except cash so there’s no danger of systems being down.

But because it takes longer, that also means you run the same risk on the way home of hitting and traffic jam and the milk going bad. Also, maybe you don’t bring enough cash and can’t afford the milk in the end. The point here being, an overthought strategy may not be as good as swift action.

Really, you need to take the time to determine the best strategy for any given aspect of your business – and much of that comes down to how your company operates and what will work best for it. Just like some folks are better drivers than walkers (or maybe vice versa) your organization is probably going to be better at achieving the same objective as a competitive in a completely different ways – with different people, tools, processes, and execution.

This is the first segment in a three-part series about Basic Strategy. Look for Part II tomorrow and read more about Strategy here on Bizzia.

Adam Bullied has more over 8 years of experience working in start-ups and maintains a blog on product management at WriteThatDown.com.