Bernard Marr is an internationally bestselling author, futurist, keynote speaker, and strategic advisor to businesses and governments. He advises many of the world’s best-known organizations on strategy, digital transformation, and business performance. And in addition to following him extensively, I’ve discovered that he has countless very useful templates on a variety of topics, which I hope you will also find useful. Today’s template is the foundation of every endeavor, as it addresses your company’s strategy. I’ll summarize his insights for you.
Delivering on your strategic plans is very difficult if you’re not clear about exactly what you want to achieve and, in turn, which areas of your business you should focus on to achieve those goals. The idea is to have a clear and concise tool, preferably a one-page document that absolutely anyone in the company can easily understand.
To help companies create their one-page strategy, Bernard Marr developed this SMART Strategy Board. It’s divided into six simple sections, which form the six critical areas that every business strategy should cover.
Let’s look at each section in turn:
Your Purpose
Here you should set the stage and provide an overall context for your strategy, in simple terms, by laying out exactly what your company aims to achieve. A great way to do this is to include your purpose and ambition statements. These are two different statements, which serve different purposes.
The purpose (or mission) should be a short and simple statement that perfectly summarizes why your business exists. As the name suggests, it answers the question, “What is our purpose?” A mission statement is generally intended for internal use. It communicates your company’s intentions, motivates internal stakeholders, and defines what success looks like for your company. It should include your target audience, what services or products you offer, and what makes your offering unique.
An ambition (or vision) statement defines what the organization wants to achieve in the future, detailing where the company is headed. Available to internal and external stakeholders, a vision statement sets out your ambitions in an inspiring way. A good vision statement should inspire employees to perform at their best, inspire customers to choose you over your competitors, and inspire shareholders to invest in the business.
Your Customers
This is key: understanding your customers, specifically: what you already know about them, what you don’t yet know, and what you need to know if you’re going to implement your strategy successfully.
This falls into two key areas: your target market and your value proposition.
First, you need to establish who your target market is. For example, are you targeting a particular segment, geographic region, or demographic? Define exactly what you need to know about the target market to improve your chances of success.
Next, you need to clarify your value proposition: what you offer your target market. Essentially, you need to define why customers will choose you. Is it quality, innovation, customer service, price, or something else?
Your Finances
In this section, you should clearly state the company’s financial goals and ambitions. What is your business model? How will you generate revenue with your strategy? What are your specific revenue objectives? What about profit, cash flow, and growth goals? Additionally, you need to consider how you will fund the strategy. It is vital that you have the funds to properly implement the strategy.
This section naturally follows the “customer” panel, as pinning down your market and value proposition will help you define exactly how you will drive revenue and profit growth.
Your Operations
Here you need to carefully consider your operations, or the things you need to focus on internally and be really good at in order to implement the strategy. This section is divided into two sections: partners and core competencies.
Start by defining which partners, distributors, suppliers, or other parties are vital to implementing your strategy. Do you already work with these partners, or do you have to create the relationship from scratch? If you already work with them, is the relationship healthy? If you don’t yet work with them, how will you go about forming that relationship?
Next, look at your internal competencies in terms of the competencies your organization needs to execute the strategy successfully. Define whether there are gaps and, if so, how you plan to fill them. Also, look at what systems and processes need to change or improve if you want to achieve your goals.
Your Resources
The goal of this section is to define exactly what resources you need if you want to execute your strategy successfully. This covers IT systems and data, infrastructure, people, talent and culture; and value and leadership.
This means you need to carefully consider a number of questions. For example, what IT systems and data will you need? What infrastructure (property, machinery, or plant) will you need? What are your talent and people requirements? Do you have the right people, and if not, how will you find them? Do you plan to train your current staff or recruit new people? And finally, what are the key culture and leadership outcomes that will enable this strategy to succeed?
Your Competition and Risks
This section is often missing from strategy documents, but it’s a key threat most organizations face when implementing their strategies. Therefore, in this panel, you should consider what competition you’ll face as you work to implement your strategy and what risks you may encounter along the way.
Ask yourself, what is your core competition and why? What external factors might threaten my success, whether specific market, regulatory, customer, or competitive risks? What internal financial, operational, or talent risks do I face? Identifying these threats before you begin implementing your strategy is the best way to mitigate them.
Remember, a strategy doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. In fact, the easier it is to understand, the more likely it is to succeed. Therefore, I urge all companies to try the one-page approach and create their own SMART Strategy Board.
The full note is available at: https://www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=759