Strategy and Tactics: Five characteristics of successful strategies
With all the books written for “upper management” on how to develop strategy, you’d think CEO’s were the dumbest people on earth. (there is, of course, this totally pimpalicious temptation here to make some snarky comment, but I shall refrain….)
The truth is, strategy is hard. Its hard because developing plans to grow your company’s profits are fraught with risk and competition. Because strategy identifies these plans, they necessarily involve changing what the company and its employees (or YOU) are doing today to something different tomorrow. Change is hard for everyone. Especially when the strategy could turn out to be the wrong one.
In a Pimp Your Work mode, our view about the characteristics of a successful strategy is a bit different then the Upper Management mega-corporation book view. Usually the people reading this blog have to implement the strategy in their work every day. So our view is a little more bottom-up (and on the weekend, bottoms-up!) than top-down. Or maybe looking across the table trying to understand how to manage the implementation of the strategy. So we’re not into the consultant, Wall Street, investor, financial statement stuff: we just want to know what the strategy is and what we need to do to get things done.
So here are the characteristics of a successful strategy from that view:
The strategy is easy to understand. If you can’t repeat the strategy in one sentence that makes sense, it will be difficult to succeed. “Pimp Your Work will provide tools, tips and tricks to make your work life better.” Not: “Pimp Your Work will help you succeed in business through strategy creation, tactical implementation, and operational planning from creative and innovative tools and tips that, from a variety of sources and opinions, will help make your work life better as compared to what you are doing right now.” Yuck.
The strategy is based upon research and data. One should be able to make the case for the strategy through data collected. The research and data should be able to answer the question: Why is there a need? Pimp Your Work was developed because few blogs combined the business knowledge with the tools and tips to make people’s work lives better. Tools, yes. Tips, yes. Management philosophy, yes. Strategy, yes. Combined in a way that will help people succeed in their work? No. So here we are.
The strategy has a unique twist to the data. Everyone can go look at data and come up with similar conclusions. The unique twist should answer the question: How will we be different than others in the same field of work? “We will write a blog about tools and tips that will help people in their work. It will speak to the need of individuals to succeed in the work environment….” Are you snoring yet? Ho-hum. Naw, what we’re going to do is Pimp Your Work . That’s our unique twist on the data. Working should be fun and Pimping Your Work will help make it so as well has help you succeed.
The strategy leverages resources. We all come with strengths and weaknesses. A strategy should leverage the strengths of the people in the company and the work they do. Pimp Your Work doesn’t try and be your Startup Spark, Brandcurve, figure out Business and Blogging, tell you how to be a Small Business Boomer, or even tell you how to be successful as in Successful Blog. Instead, we look at the underlying business strategies, tools and productivity tips that can be used in all of those areas. We’re trying to leverage our strengths, not something else.
The strategy effortlessly delivers to your customer. Its all about delivering to your customer, right? If your strategy is to cross-sell services to the customer standing in front of you, your tools should make it easy to do so. If your strategy is to build a PC custom to order and deliver it in five days, all of your operations need to fit together to make it easy to deliver a PC in five days. Or, in our case, if your goal is to provide a wide range of business information and yet offer very specific business advice, you should read Pimp Your Work and then look over to the upper right by “More Blogs From b5media,” click on the little “+” sign by Business and see how easily the business world opens up for you.
See? Even something simple like a blog has a strategy to succeed. What’s your strategy?
Tags: General work pimps, Strategy, Survival SkillsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: General work pimps, Strategy, Survival Skills
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