To highlight areas of opportunity within your business and help us to formulate the actions that will be necessary in order to make those opportunities accessible, we follow a structured and proven process.
Workshop
The workshop is aimed at the key decision makers and/or stakeholders in your company and is usually of one day duration, although we have run half-day and two day workshops for clients. We find that the most value is gained by holding the workshop away from your normal working environment, either at one of our offices or another conference facility, but we are flexible in our approach to suit your particular circumstances.
Each workshop is tailored to a client's individual business needs and circumstances, but its key objective is to establish candidates for the strategic development of your business.
In the workshop we start by looking at what we mean by strategy and how the strategic planning process works. Then we will ask questions about you and your stakeholders' ambitions, as well as looking at the core values, purpose and vision of the company. These are the essential foundation stones in deciding the direction of our strategic plans.
Next we explain how companies create value and explain the types of strategies that can be pursued. We do this by looking at various types of strategy categorised by their risk versus reward profiles.
We then look at how markets work and how that affects competition. As we discuss this, we will consider how it applies to your company's markets, which we looked at earlier. This will help us to identify how your company can best compete as we start to generate new ideas.
Now we come to a very important but often neglected part when planning strategy, which is to look at the company's current situation. We will explore your company's core competences through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. We will examine the market forces at play in your industry, we will introduce the idea of strategic leverage, we will look at the market competition and conflict, and we will establish where the company has room to develop and grow.
This will all enable us to establish the types of strategy that will be most successful for your company. We will use relevant 'lateral thinking' processes to generate new ideas and/or approaches to developing your business and moving your company towards the goals outlined at the beginning.
The final step is to go back over the day and what we have learnt and make final decisions on strategy candidates and try and rank them. This is not intended to make decisions for you, but it will give you objective data within which your decisions can be framed, enabling you to move on to the next stage with confidence.
Following the workshop, the notes taken during the day and the outcomes will all be documented.
