Back in F2O Ready we defined strategy as follows:
“A business strategy outlines the plan of action to achieve the vision and set objectives of an organization and guides the decision-making processes to improve the company’s financial stability in a competing market.”
In the terms of F2O we want to set strategy such that it achieves the mission that has been set by the owners. The mission, typically, will take multiple years to achieve and will require several different strategic initiatives to fulfil it.
The strategy, practically, is an articulation of how the mission will be achieved, what the milestones are along the way, and then all the initiatives that will be undertaken by the business to fulfil the strategy and ultimately fulfil the business mission that has been established.
It provides guidance to the organization of where it is headed and what they need to do to stay on track. If you’d like an analogy, think of a “flight plan”. A plane wants to get from point A to point B. From where you are to where you want to go. The captain of the flight then logs a flight plan of their intended route to fly from point A to point B. The plane takes off and will actually spend 99% of their time off course. The captain’s job, along with the crew, is to make continued adjustments to get the flight back on plan, whilst making the trip as pleasurable and enjoyable for all the passengers. Everyone plays their part, but they all know the plane is flying from Point A to Point B and success will be measured by the ability of the plane to successfully land and disembark the passengers at Point B.
