Examples Of Strategies

SourceBeing Scrappy Is Not a Strategy We’re surrounded by agile startups. Companies that proudly boast about being dynamic, highly adaptable, and most of all scrappy. Filled with a small team of individuals who can seemingly do it all, there’s no stopping the scrappy startup. Or is there? The scrappy startup is plagued with indecision. The scrappy startup can’t determine what tactics work best for them. The scrappy startup has disjointed teams that often aren’t working toward the same goal. Teams operate as silos with their own agendas, goals and objectives. The result is a company that is pulled in every direction, achieving nothing in the process. Strategy provides a north star for the company to follow. Much like a lighthouse prevents ships from running aground, a strategy keeps a company on track and out of trouble. The Business Strategy: The business strategy — or business plan — is the godfather of strategies. It sets the direction for the whole company. Every other strategy must be created to serve the larger business plan. Questions to answer: Who is the company’s target audience? What need are you addressing? What makes you different? How are you going to make money? How will you promote your business? What resources do you need to get started? How will resources and budgets be allocated? What does success looks like? The Marketing Strategy: Great marketing plans include strategies and tactics for finding, attracting and maintaining customers. Questions to answer: How will the product/service be presented to the world? What message/s need to be conveyed? Who are your competitors? Who is the target audience and how does the product/service solve their problem? What core marketing tactics will be used to deliver the message- advertising, PR, content marketing, trade shows, SEO etc? What channels will be used for distribution? How will they be tested and optimized? What does success look like? Customer Success Strategy: Customers need ongoing counsel and attention to ensure they remain a customer. This strategy focuses on what can be done to keep customer satisfied over the long term. Questions to answer: How will the customers be on-boarded? What resources will be allocated to account management? What potential roadblocks need to be overcome? What product revisions need to be included to maintain customer satisfaction? What does success look like? Product Strategy: The product strategy works closely with the customer success and sales team to ensure new features and services are in line with what the market is seeking. What features will be focused on and when? How will the product serve the needs of the market? What is the timeline for release? How will resources be allocated to each development feature? What does success look like? Measuring success Notice a theme above? A repetitive question, perhaps? Documenting and following a clearly defined strategy helps companies work cohesively toward one goal — as individual teams and as a larger company. But one of the real benefits of working with a strategy is it provides a distinction as to what success looks like. Without a strategy, how is a company supposed to know if their goals and objectives have been achieved? Or even know what the goals and objectives are? Scrappy startups, while agile and energetic, are limited in the level of success they reach for no other reason than their definition of success is unclear. 99 problems… And a plan ain’t one Problems with a scrappy startup can look like this: The marketing team generates 100 leads in 3 months. Good result. Or is it? Should there be more? Maybe we underachieved. Do we need more resources? How did we allocate our budget? Or maybe 50 leads is more than what was expected. Great. But are those leads helping the business? Who is the ideal customer, again? Can we optimize the process to get more or better leads in the future? Hell, what was the process??? Without a strategy it’s difficult to determine the impact of any action. That’s a problem when it comes to scaling or refining processes — because there’s no roadmap or basic idea of what’s going on. “Make it up as you go…” Scrappy startups are notorious for having a “You’ll figure it out” philosophy. Meaning, as new employees are hired, they’re expected to slip into the groove and pick things up along the way with little direction. This is a natural side-effect that stems from the need to be lean and spread resources thin. But this philosophy causes major problems. Each new employee brings with them different agendas and attitudes to the team. Their ideas on how to sell, market, build and design the product/service are all different. There’s massive potential for misalignment. The result is a company being pulled in every direction — with no single goal driving the team forward. Ideas are great — if they’re all focused on the same end-goalThrowing sh*t against a wall Often scrappy startups will have a general idea of what’s working and add and remove things as they go. This is not a strategy. This is throwing sh*t against a wall and seeing what sticks, which can be a good way to test ideas, but it’s a poor longterm strategy. A strategy doesn’t mean being rigid as a company. Tweaks will need to be made to every plan as things progress. But documenting these changes and analyzing how elements of the plan are failing or succeeding in the context of larger goals is essential for success. Strategies help you focus on the future Too often, startup founders focus on the now. They become obsessed with solving the problems directly in front of them without considering the longer term play. This is what separates the superstars of the startup world — like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Jobs — from the rest. These men are futurists. They see what’s happening 5, 10, 15 years down the track and set out a plan, or a strategy, to bring that vision to life. Startups don’t have to be a madhouse Yes — do what it takes to get results. Get your hands dirty, mix up teams, use new tools, test assumptions and try new and different approaches. But do so with a plan in place. There needs to be a method to the madness. Trying to do everything at once with no plan doesn’t work. The product suffers, the marketing message gets muddled, and the customers get frustrated. Stick to the strategy and grow with purpose. *** This is post 5/30 as part of my 30 posts in 30 days challenge. If you enjoyed it in some way and want to follow along as I hopelessly write about things for the next month — hit the little heart button. It means a lot… honestly.