You’re In Business War Whether You Know It or Not (Part 2)
After establishing your foundation, you have to develop offensive and defensive strategies which will allow your organization to protect your products, customers, and markets from your competitors and to develop the strategies necessary to capture those products, customers, and markets from your competitors. This is crucial to your organization. The main stratagems devised must be focused on enhancing your organization’s foundation and to protect it from competitors.
Logic dictates that this is the real meat and potatoes of what strategic planning is and should be all about. This has to be the basis on which all your plans are devised…, for without knowing exactly what your strategic planning should accomplish it will be impossible to devise effective plans. It would be like trying to plan a trip without knowing your destination. It would be an exercise in futility.
A proper strategic planning initiative must analyze each and every facet of your organization and those of your competitors. Strategic planning which does not take into consideration your competition will be totally useless. A thorough analysis of the composition of your competitor’s foundation and all his external variables are crucial to the development of strategies.
You will never know how to deal with any competitive obstacles and attacks if you aren’t prepared for them. You’ll need a thorough analysis such as; who and what are my best and worst customers, products, and markets? What made each of these a success or a failure? Which of these shows the most promise for the future etc? What are the best ways for us to gain market share?
Determine exactly who your competition is. Anticipate how your competitors will react to each and every move you make. Develop strategies for how you will react to threats by your competitors to your products, customers and markets. Determine the strategic assets and liabilities of your organization and those of your pre-determined competitors.
You must ask yourself what are the principles, beliefs and values that will guide our company’s behavior. What type of return and profit guidelines do we want to follow? What area of excellence does my organization as well as my competitor’s posses?
Imagine a general going into a war without knowing important information about his army or his foe’s, such as troop strength, weapon capabilities, quality of officers, re-supply availability, etc.
Even our own US army could get beat by a much smaller foe if it’s leaders didn’t know the answers to questions like these. He would be easily out-planned, outmaneuvered and easily defeated.
After these questions and many more have been analyzed and answered, then strategies have to be developed to address each and everyone one of them. What-if scenarios and game theory development have to be played out to test these strategies before they are used in practice. This is the real world of strategic planning and it requires a well thought out art called strategic thinking to insure that all the important areas are covered.
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