Strategy involves doing the right thing, at the right place, at the right time, in the right way, with the right people.
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Paul B. Batalden, MD
Arthur Jones rightly modified Dr. Batalden’s quote above noting that, “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Strategy is how people design their organizations. It’s also how individuals design their lives. Whether you and I know it or not, the life we have today was built with the strategies or choices we made in the past. To change our lives or organizations, we must choose better strategies. Unfortunately, many of us go about our lives without good strategies for getting the things we care about done.
This article will teach you an excellent, well-researched approach to creating any strategy. Whether you are looking for a strategy for an area of personal growth, a strategy to mentor or coach your children, a strategy to coach your employees, or a strategy to run or start a business, this article will help you develop a great strategy. The steps will help you create any strategy–no exceptions.
Strategy is about making choices that help you win and reign as king/queen over a realm/region within an industry. Waging war, conquering territories, and reigning over them is something that kings and queens have done for thousands of years of recorded human history. You can come up with a strategy for anything by thinking in terms of waging a successful war campaign, winning, and reigning over a territory.
The 6 Questions of Winning
The 5 W’s and 1H are 6 questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem-solving. They are often mentioned in journalism, research, and police investigations. They constitute a formula for getting the complete story on a subject. A report is only considered complete if it answers all six questions.
- Who was involved?
- What happened?
- Where did it take place?
- When did it take place?
- Why did that happen?
- How did it happen?
I think that these six questions are also are a powerful tool to use to come up with the strategy for anything you want to do. If you answer them in an iterative manner, you will come up with a strategy.
A good strategy is always found at the point of alignment of all 6 questions when they are asked about winning. To get that alignment, you must ask the 6 questions in an iterative manner.
Since strategy is all about winning, the questions, rearranged, go as follows:
- Why do you want to win? This is the winning purpose. To come up with a good strategy, always start with why. Simon Sinek wrote a good book titled start with why on the importance of starting with purpose.
- What do you want to win? What is winning? — This refers to the winning aspiration.
- When do you want to win? Knowing when you want to win is essential to coming up with a good strategy. Doing something in 10 years requires a different approach to doing the same thing in 1 year.
- Where are we going to win? Since where you win is determined by where you play, this question can be posed as, where are we going to play?
- How are we going to win?
- Who is going to help us win? What activities do they need to do excellently for us to win?- This speaks of the people, processes, capabilities, and management systems needed to win.
Where to play and how to win are the two most important questions that are at the heart of strategy. Several strategists, most notably, Roger Martin, approach strategy by asking a similar series of questions.
The GROWTH Strategy
In my practice, I’ve adapted and combined elements from both Rumelt, Lafley, Martin, others, and my experience into a six-choice approach built on the preceding questions. It’s easily remembered with the acrostic GROWTH. In creating the GROWTH acronym, I also adapted and used elements of the GROW model for coaching. GROWTH reminds us of the six choices we have to make to come up with an excellent strategy. Don’t forget that strategy is a series of choices we make that allow us to win. They are choices about what to do, and by default, what NOT to do.
The GROWTH acronym represents the 6 choices in an easy-to-remember fashion. In our discussion of GROWTH strategy, we will focus our illustrations on creating a business strategy for an organization or product. However, the GROWTH approach can be used to create a strategy for doing anything. You can use it to create a strategy for spiritual formation, a strategy for coaching employees or your children, a strategy for managing your emotional life, etc.
Guiding aspirations or goals
What are our guiding aspirations or broad goals? Your guiding aspiration and goals are what you really want (your interests). They are your chosen way to win and are defined by your mission, vision (BHAG), values, and the specific goals to achieve them. In other words, it is the broad aspirational goals and the SMART goals against which we can measure progress. It is very helpful to define broad goals in terms of interests, not positions.
Choosing guiding aspirations/goals is choosing what you want to pursue-it’s choosing the right thing.
Key question: What are our guiding aspirations or broad aspirations and the specific goals against which we can measure progress?
Region to play [and the Root of the Problem to address]
Recognize, understand, and name the problem you want to tackle
In what region will you choose to play to achieve your guiding aspiration or goals? In creating the strategy of a business, the region constitutes
- The geography and
- The customer segment.
Research and diagnosis are crucial to making this choice of where to play. To choose where to play, you have to act as a doctor and gather all the information you need to diagnose the situation (disease) before you start offering treatment options in the next step.
In choosing your region to play, you must clearly define the reality there. That’s the “reality to play”. It’s “the region to treat.” If your strategy is aimed at solving a specific problem, the “region to play” is the diagnosis of the situation down to the root of the problem. It’s the aspect of the problem that you will choose to attack to bring resolution to it.
If your strategy is aimed at launching a commercial product, the region to play is the geography and customer segment that will be most profitable and align with your guiding aspiration (including your values). This is done after careful research so that you can choose a place and people that will be profitable for your company. You are choosing a problem (suffered by a specific group of people in a specific place) that will respond best to the treatment options you can develop and produce the best outcomes for you–where the outcomes are defined by both profitability and achievement of your guiding aspirations (including your values).
If your strategy is for personal growth (spiritual formation) in a specific area, your region to play will be the part of your soul that needs help and the specific problem ailing that part that needs to be addressed.
If your strategy is for coaching someone (child, employee, client), your region to play will be the area of the challenges they are having.
When you are creating the strategy for a business, you have to choose the geographic location and customer segment that will fit well with the rest of your strategic elements. Depending on your company, you can choose to play in any geographic location in the world and with any customer segment that aligns with the rest of your strategy. However, you are creating a strategy for an area of personal growth, to grow in a specific area of your life, the options are somewhat limited (though still present since you can prioritize). When your strategy is to solve a specific problem, your region to play is the root cause of the problem. You discover it by doing a root-cause analysis to diagnose the problem.
You have to do two things here: First, choose your region to play or reality of focus, and second, examine the reality there to make sure you can achieve your guiding aspirations there. When you choose a place to play, you are really choosing the reality you see in that place. In a strategy, how do you come to choose one “where” over others? The total reality of a realm determines whether one chooses that “where” or not. The reality of a realm is really what you are choosing to play there or not play there (not merely the location). Which regional realities are we choosing? By default, which realities are we saying no to? This speaks of the right place and the realities there.
Key question: Across the potential field available to us, in what region will we choose to play (and by default and not play)?
Options to offer
What options will we offer? Options comprise of three things:
- The Product or service type you’ll offer,
- The Production stage: Where along the vertical stage of production you’ll engage, and
- The Product distribution channel you’ll use to reach the customer.
The region to play and options to offer should be treated together.
Brainstorm “treatment options.” If the “region to play” is the “reality to treat” or the diagnosis of the problem, the options to offer are similar to the therapeutic options that will work for that situation. Brainstorm options and evaluate each option to choose the best options. Evaluation includes considering the obstacles there to know which opportunities are viable for you. Among other things, consider the right time for each option and also how much time it will take and how much time you can afford.
Key questions: What “treatment options” or product/service options will you choose to address the problem of interest in your chosen region to play?
Way to win
How will we win? The way we will win in the chosen options and region against the competitors (obstacles) there. That is the recipe for winning. It defines a set of coherent actions to take. Ways to win in business include:
- Low-cost strategy,
- Differentiation strategy,
- Focus strategy (this often turns into a low-cost or differentiation strategy)
- Value innovation (blue ocean strategy),
- Building win-win partnerships with competitors,
- Effective fundraising (in nonprofits).
This section assesses your way to win. What are you willing to do and how will you do it? How will we choose to win against the competition or obstacles there? While the goals and aspirations touch on outcome goals, winning methodology touches on process and performance goals. You need to choose the right way to win. This involves a detailed recipe that considers the obstacles to be faced and anticipates how to tackle them.
Key question: In our chosen region to play, how will we choose to win (achieve our guiding aspirations) against the competition (obstacles) there?
Team capabilities
What team capabilities will we need to win in our chosen manner (see guiding aspirations)? This refers to team capabilities at different levels of the organization needed to win. The composition and configuration of talents and strengths that need to be built and maintained to win in the chosen way.
Capabilities are activities that, when done extremely well, help the team to win in its chosen region-to-play and in its chosen manner (way to win). To win, you have to play to your strengths. You have to focus on your talents! You need the right team capabilities to win.
Key question: What team capabilities do you need to build and maintain to win in your chosen manner?”
How-to-manage
How will we manage our team capabilities? These are the high-quality management practices, systems, structures, and measures that are needed to empower our team capabilities and support our preceding strategic choices.
What helper systems (e.g. management systems) are necessary to operate to build and maintain the team and capabilities? These helper systems are crucial because they will facilitate the continuous implementation and continuous evaluation of all the preceding strategy steps. Without proper management, the entire strategy will fall apart. It must include effective quality improvement (QI) using PDSA and other QI strategies.
Again, these simply represent a management system that supports the preceding five steps, especially the team capabilities to do their work well. It involves continuous evaluation and improvement and other support needed to get the job done.
Key question: What management systems will you need to build and maintain to support your team capabilities and achieve your goals?
The GROWTH strategy provides six choices that have to be made to choose a great strategy. These are questions that have to be answered iteratively. These questions have to fit with one another, link with one another, and reinforce one another. Changes are made in an iterative manner until a strategy is chosen that agrees with all the questions.
Here is what Roger Martin says about creating a strategy: “To create a strategy, you have to iterate — think a little bit about Aspirations & Goals, then a little bit about Where to Play and How to Win, then back to Aspirations & Goals to check and modify, then down to Capabilities and Management Systems to check whether it is really doable, then back up again to modify accordingly.”
Related articles:
- The GROWTH Model for Coaching (Practice Sheet with Questions).
- Choosing Your Strategy.
- The GROWTH framework: 6 Steps to coach anyone.
