Strategy comes from a military model. Whether that model came from the East: Sun Tzu and the Art of War; or the West: Napoleon or Alexander – its military. Strategy’s foundation is to create success for a King. The King has the plan. The General marshaled the resources, understood the terrain and the enemy to carry out that plan.

That’s us: the Generals. That’s Him: the King. So what does the King want to accomplish with our businesses? Our idea? Our product? When we know that, then we can look at our resources, the terrain, and the competition. Only then can we formulate a strategy.

This series of blogs starts to look at the terrain to give us a framework for business. What’s the lay of the land? Is there a business advantage or disadvantage in our terrain? What is the environment like? We want to scan the environment to understand our opportunities and threats. Often people do that with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), but SWOT is too inward looking for a robust strategy. We need a more robust process. We need to look outward.

Many companies confuse strategy with planning. Some of the multi-nationals I’ve worked with plan well –typically extrapolating last year’s success, adding a percentage of growth and calling it next year’s strategy. But they don’t have a strategy that takes into consideration today’s terrain and extrapolate it to tomorrow’s opportunities or threats. If there is no outside input, there is no strategy. Strategy assumes uncertain conditions where planning assumes certainty. B4B helps people do a business plan, and that plan is an important tool to start a business. Strategy is different – it’s an ongoing process. Your business strategy will change as the situation changes. Strategy assumes opposing forces — competition or changes in the environment. So our analysis must look at the uncertainties, anomalies, complexities and contradictions. But its also important to know what is just noise and what is important.

The next few blogs will begin to look at some of the areas that are important to business today.

Stay tuned as we address questions such as; What are the areas that are important to your business today? What is your terrain? What environmental areas affect your business?

What’s in Your Strategy?