By Steve Walsh
I see a lot of people confuse the meaning of the term ‘strategy’, and not treating it in the right way.
Strategy has become a buzzword, and a word that’s banded around in business a lot. But strategy is just one part of a business performance framework.
In all our work, we define a business performance framework as follows:
1. The vision
The vision is, simply, what you are trying to achieve. It should be inspirational and, if it’s strong enough, should only need to be reviewed every three to five years.
2. The mission
The mission is more of a statement about who you’re doing this for, why you’re doing it, and your ultimate solution to the problem you’re trying to solve.
Your mission should be more motivational, for your employees, staff and people to get behind.
3. Goals
Your goals are output focussed, typically on three to five measurable things, that are key performance indicators contributing to you achieving your vision and mission.
4. Strategy
After that; strategy – finally! Strategy is the process behind you actually achieving those goals, which contribute to the mission and vision.
5. Operations
Finally, we have operations. These are the actions you take every single day through that strategy/process to achieve the output goals and, therefore, the mission and vision.
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Whenever you’re thinking about strategy within your business, make sure you think about it in context with everything else!
