1. Strategy
1. Context analysis
Continually assess the external environment.
Appoint a dedicated staff with specific responsibilities to monitor the external environment.
Develop strategy in the day-to-day monitoring of the external environment.
Monitor the external environment to uncover the current needs of the people buying their product.
Use both formal and informal processes to monitor customer needs.
Monitor competitor activities to keep the company focused on being the best.
Write reports summarizing this data, explaining the probable effect of competitive activities and how current or potential competition may alter industry dynamics.
Monitor technology news and innovations to identify progressive technologies that offer competitive advantage.
Identify target customers and understand the industry "value-chain" (External Customers).
Define market segments.
Understand what problems the customer seeks to solve when purchasing its product or service.
Determine the most important customer wants and needs at each critical incident.
Track customer satisfaction using external sources other than customers.
Share customer satisfaction information within the company widely to stimulate change and improve performance.
Establish customer satisfaction as the company's first priority.
Measure customer satisfaction throughout the life of the customer relationship.
Study customer complaints.
Contact lost customers.
Seek out and act on customer suggestions.
Identify the environmental events that will change customer expectations.
Identify and study the richest sources of information.
Identify emerging trends in customer preferences that may affect customer expectations.
Track demographic projections of customer populations.
Adopt a customer-intimate approach.
Monitor the customer consumption chain.
Apply scenario forecasting to explore the future.
2. Strategy development
Focus on strategic thinking instead of strategic planning.
Emphasis on the importance of external as well as internal factors.
Focus on key success factors within the industry.
Focus on the future instead of the present.
Emphasize qualitative, not quantitative, aspects of strategy development.
Develop the company's (or business unit's) strategic plan first and use it as the basis for the operating plan and capital budget.
Keep documentation short and simple.
Review the strategy on a regular basis.
Develop a mission statement that describes what the company does and which markets it serves.
Consider all stakeholders--employees, suppliers, customers, and shareholders--in designing the mission statement.
Link the company's mission to its vision and values.
Review the mission statement periodically and update as needed.
Articulate a vision that makes sense in terms of external factors (suppliers, customers, substitutes, competitors, and business environment); internal resources (core competencies and existing business portfolio); and company values.
Build strategic alliances.
3. Strategy implementation
Modify organizational structure, competencies, and control systems to facilitate implementation of the strategy.
Make sure that the organizational structure supports strategy implementation.
Remove artificial barriers to strategy implementation.
Ensure that employees have skills needed to accomplish strategic goals.
Provide adequate human and capital resources for successful strategy implementation.
Ensure that managers and employees have information needed to accomplish strategic goals.
Reward behavior that advances strategic objectives.
Expand the organization's collective skill set to include new competencies.
Integrate planning with other control systems, including budgets, information systems, and compensation.
Develop marketing strategies, sales processes, human resource practices, and research and development (R&D) capabilities that support the company's strategic goals.
Communicate the strategy well and often.
Organize for performance.
Create the information flows necessary to monitor, control, and link organizational units.
Develop a comprehensive performance measurement system that integrates internal operating statistics, customer feedback and external sources other than customers.
Educate and train employees about customer satisfaction.
4. Performance evaluation
Monitor progress toward the firm's overarching strategic goals.
Define the results expected from successful execution of the strategy.
Restate the general goals described in the vision and strategy in terms of variables that can be measured directly and objectively.
Demonstrate commitment to achieving tangible results.
Alert the company to changes in the business environment that necessitate a change of plans.
Develop a set of performance measures and monitor the firm's accomplishments with respect to them.
Modify the strategic plan as needed to achieve the company's long-term objectives.
Involve core stakeholders in the development of measures
Create a small, balanced family of measures
Align overall organizational performance measures with strategy and with processes
Set goals which support continuous improvement and stimulate breakthrough performance
Monitor performance measures through an efficient and effective mechanism
Communicate throughout the organization those goals to which senior management is committed and why.
Reward the workforce based on their performance relative to goals
Manage transition to change
Provide sufficient and timely information and fair disclosure to shareholders and the investment community in a manner consistent with generally accepted business practices and the investor relations strategy
Develop key messages that differentiate and strengthen the company