Inspiration for board members on the strategy work
As a board member, have you related to Alice?
Most people know Alice in Wonderland. But why, as a board member, do you have to deal with Alice? Bringing in this metaphor into the boardroom is this just even more hot air to the already hot air that surrounds strategy and business development?
All boards know about their tasks, roles and responsibilities. One of the responsibilities is the strategic angle, including setting out the direction of the company. Many have experience of the strategy process and know that a plan is very important and essential for success. But many also find the task of drawing up the strategic plan too difficult and sometimes unmanageable. There are many elements to deal with, various people to be involved and all the sub-elements must be summarized. It is both time consuming and resource-intensive – especially when things changing at the speed that they do, and the strategy must therefore always be up to date.
From chaos to overview
Over the past several years I have worked with strategy in the good “old fashioned” way, where various preliminary work is carried out, various analyses are prepared, qualitative interviews are conducted with customers, suppliers, employees and so on. Next, the management team, management, board of directors, the strategy group, etc. gather for various workshops. Time is spent on preparation, planning, analysis, facilitation, interviews, documentation, notes, presentations and reporting. Various employees are taken out of service – often several days with conference rooms, meals, driving, etc. to be booked and paid.
“From that experience, I decided that something had to be done about it, and that’s how MakeMyStrategy™ became a reality”.
What does Alice in Wonderland have to do with strategy?
Many companies often make the strategy work very difficult, analytical and time consuming, which means that the strategy work is downgraded both because of time and money. It’s a shame because all experience shows that a targeted plan leads to higher success rates. And this is where Alice in Wonderland comes in. In the fairy tale, Alice gets lost in the fairytale forest. In the woods, she meets the Cheshire Cat, and Alice asks “Which way should I go?”. To this, the Cheshire Cat replies “It depends on where you are going”. Alice replies “I don’t really know” and the Cheshire Cat replies back “Then it doesn’t matter which way you choose”. Transferred to the boardroom and the company in general, it is essential that the board and management are aligned and are completely clear on the strategy and the goal. Otherwise, there are a lot of “Alices” running around the company working in different directions.
Time is money
It means a strategic plan is not nice-to-have – it is need-to-have and for many companies the saying goes: “Time is money”.
With MakeMyStrategy™ you get a digital supporting tool that guides you through the strategy work. You get focused, get prioritized the most important future challenges, and you are “forced” to relate, both to the current strategic situation and to the direction of the company. The tool creates structure, overview and summarizes the work into concrete activity plans, an Executive Summary and a detailed strategic plan, so you can safely concentrate on qualifying the content.
An important “detail” is that you can leave the tool and return at a different time, just as you can involve the internal and external people you want. And finally, it is possible to incorporate all the material the company already has and that is relevant to the strategy.
“MakeMyStrategy™ is a Danish cloud-based strategy tool that guides the company through the strategy work and creates structure, overview and summarizes the work so that the company can concentrate on qualifying the content.”
The tool is based on the principles from the book “Strategy in winning companies” written by the authors Jørgen Lægaard and Mikael Vest. The book is used in educational contexts, among other things, at universities and is based on experience from about 600 strategy processes. The principles in the book are complemented in MakeMyStrategy™ by real-life experiences with both strategy and e-learning and provide the opportunity to:
- incorporating own material
- involve relevant people to ensure optimal development and execution
- work dynamically without tying too many resources
Book and demo
If you would like to know more about the strategy tool and how it works in practice, then feel free to visit www.makemystrategy.com. Here you can book a demo or contact us.
This article was also published on www.betterboard.dk.