On Monday we indicated that your strategic business direction is initially revealed through understanding the marketplace and how it impacts your business. We briefly presented our version, a much better approach, to the standard “strategic planning process” often done as a routine exercise that quickly begins to gather dust and does nothing to advance the organization.

We also offered you Eight Steps we find valuable in the process, to help you fashion the right plan for your business. And today, we offer you Three Key Tips for developing your Strategic Core Statements:

1. Short trumps long. Why? Because it needs to be concise enough to read or hear quickly and short enough to remember for repeatability. If statements are too long, people can’t determine the core spirit of the message. And it’s the core spirit of the message that helps them understand you and your brand!
2. Use some emotionally appealing language, as it is more interesting to read and easier to remember. (Remember that while people want facts, they are driven by and make decisions based on their emotions. So why not meet them there to make it more meaningful?)
3. Simple beats complex. You want easily understandable and repeatable. A message regarding who you are and why you exist (your purpose/mission); your guiding values and organizational drivers (your core values or value statements); and, what you are working to create (your vision- the ideal future state) need to be focused. People cannot quickly interpret nor remember complex or elaborate declarations.

Lastly, we leave you with one of our current favorite examples in vision and vision statements from Zappos (http://about.zappos.com/zappos-story/in-the-beginning-let-there-be-shoes), a leader in online sales through excellence in customer service. They achieve this through focus on their culture, with the strategic core statements driving their culture through engagement and empowerment of their employees. In 1999 Zappos started in online shoes, and now is a vibrant and high growth company that continues to expand its offerings (shoes to clothing to accessories) and has recently gone international with over 3 million products available. Its goal is to be the premier online shopping experience.

Vision Statement:
• One day, 30% of all retail transactions in the US will be online.
• People will buy from the company with the best service and the best selection.
• Zappos.com will be that online store.
Zappos Family 10 Core Values
• Deliver WOW Through Service
• Embrace and Drive Change
• Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
• Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
• Pursue Growth and Learning
• Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
• Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
• Do More With Less
• Be Passionate and Determined
• Be Humble

Kubica and LaForest

Last week we wrote about the post recession business climate and how it impacts your business. We further identified ways to assess how the marketplace impacts your business specifically. Knowing is the critical first step, because without knowing the facts, taking meaningful and focused action is unlikely. To quote Oliver Wendell Homes “the greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”

Direction is first revealed by understanding the marketplace and how it impacts your business. But knowing is not doing and doing generates business growth! Once you assess the market and find where you are competitively, you need to set a clear direction. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: if you don’t know where you want to get to it doesn’t matter which path you take. But for your business it matters, and it matters a lot. So identifying the direction you want to move towards is the critical next step.

The standard approach is to do a strategic plan. But we find that doing a strategic plan often turns out to be an exercise only and shortly thereafter the participants go back to their office to do their real job and revert to how they were doing it up until then.

In setting a strategic direction, we recommend the following Eight Steps:

1) Conduct as strategic visioning session to include:

2) Defining or validating the company vision statement (ideal future state)

3) Defining or validating the company mission (purpose) statement

4) Identify or validate the company values (what’s most important to guide

the work and fashion the climate of the organization)

5) Preparing an implementation plan that is actionable, including tasks,

measures and timelines, and those accountable for them

6) Identifying and implementing the best leadership and management

structure to support the operations to achieve the plan

7) Evaluating progress Quarterly and course correcting when needed

Holding leaders accountable for performance, that is the results they

produce

These eight steps are simple and straightforward. We strongly recommend avoiding complexity in the process. If the strategic plan is complex, unwieldy or convoluted; if the Vision and Mission statements are hard to understand and not easy to remember and articulate; if the Value statements do not honestly reflect organizational values; if there is no or ineffective leadership and no actionable plan and no accountability – success and growth will elude you. As the old saying goes ” a stopped watch (analog of course) is right twice a day. In your business don’t be a stopped watch.

In our Quick Tips this week, we will provide examples of Vision, Mission and Value statements and why simple trumps complex.

Copyright 2011 Kubica and LaForest