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Let's get strategic

Written by: Neil Crofts

Article Overview: Strategy is about working out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Whatever you want to do: get richer, get thinner, get fitter, get greener, get wiser, strategy will help to get you there.

Let's get strategic

Strategy is about working out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Whatever you want to do: get richer, get thinner, get fitter, get greener, get wiser, strategy will help to get you there.

It is a vital skill for anyone who wants to change anything and yet there appears a great deal of misunderstanding about strategy and, often, a complete absence.

Many are reluctant to commit to a strategy because they don’t know if it will work. More damagingly many people avoid strategy altogether and just react with whatever emotion is at hand.

When people are aggressive and violent at any level, it is not usually because their strategy has failed. It is because they don’t have a strategy.

The first step to creating a strategy is to identify where you want to be. It does not have to be hugely detailed, but it does have to be motivating for those involved. The level of detail will depend on how significant the objective is.

The first thing we need to do is to identify the real objective and without being distracted by reaction.

When small children want a toy that another child has, they simply grab it and then endure the consequences. The other child fights back or screams blue murder, they get told to give it back by parents and so on.

What the child wanted was to play with the toy - not all out war (one imagines). A more strategic, objective focussed, approach, might have yielded more favourable results.

We see this with workers striking to protect jobs in already fragile industries, with war and terrorism, and with the multitude of ways we aggress and abuse one another and ourselves.

We need to look carefully at the objectives; is it to get thin, or is it to be happy and healthy? Is it to revenge a slight or to be safe? Is it to stop the abuse of the planet or to create a sustainable society? Is it to beat the competition or to have a successful business?

The next thing we need is to know where we are starting from. What are our assets in terms of skills, tools and motivation and what are the obstacles that stand between us and the objective (as far as we can see).

Once we have identified the obstacles we need to break them down into doable jobs and put those jobs into sequence.

We need to do this process regularly, like once a month. Not waiting to finish the first plan, but checking in with the objective, assets and obstacles, before updating the jobs that need doing.

The lovely thing about strategy is that it is a constant process of evaluation and adjustment

Neil Crofts

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Article Tags: absence, assets, blue murder, consequences, emotion, favourable results, jobs, level of detail, misunderstanding, multitude, objective, parents, revenge, successful business, sustainable society, terrorism, thinner, vital skill



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