THE JOURNEY

Strategic Direction is made up of two elements; the Vision is driven by the Outside world and the Journey. The Journey is at the heart of Strategy. You have defined point B and you know where you are at Point A. The Journey defines how are you going to get there.

Ashton Bishop, Australian speaker from the organisation Step Change runs a workshop called “History’s greatest Strategists”. He has a set of cards of the great leaders from the past - Genghis Khan. Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Hannibal etc… and he asks “How would they have tackled the challenge?” This idea is that there are different strategies that get to the same destination. So, once the Vision is set (subject always to that iterative process of a Joined-Up check) the next step is to define the journey and the leadership teams values are likely to play a significant part in what that journey looks like.

That leads to the next set of questions and ideas. The next few steps can be made clear, but beyond a year or two we know it is speculative and things may change. We can not go across the water to reach the lighthouse, we have to follow the path and we do not know what surprises that may bring. It still amazes how really good businesses feel they can set and forget their 3 or 5 year plan and revisit in three years.

We can define, now, what we THINK the journey will entail. We can identify where we need to grow and evolve. We can define our success factors required to succeed and, for a business, how we can sustain our growth. We can explain the Horizons or phases that we might go through. No leader should try this alone; we are beginning to get away from the “Why?” into the “What?” and the “How?” and the senior team ned to be involved. Visual tools help this process enormously.

How Does your FLYWHEEL TURN?

Jim Collins, in the book “Good to Great” introduced us to the concept of a flywheel. He would credit the success of Amazon to their clarity of how their flywheel turns; but there are many different flywheels, not all about scale and reducing costs.

However, developing a flywheel is not easy - it is painful to watch executive teams trying to do this from a standing start. A facilitated approach is essential and starts with the more simple questions of critical success factors.

Sustainability is key here. One of the spokes / wedges of the flywheel must, must define how financial returns are made and how they are re-invested in the other elements of the flywheel.

Once the flywheel is set, then a critical review of how well each spoke is performing provides the priorities for the next phase.

What are the three horizons?

The horizons model brings in the dimension of time. It instils urgency without panic! Organisations have not got the resources to do everything at once. Once the growth is defined in the context of longer term objective, the horizons allow the elephant to be eaten, one bite at a time.

It allows a business leader to share the vision but ensure the organisation are focused on the first steps.

It allows the “Blue Sky” ideas to remain in the plan, without getting distracted by them.

Themes are useful. Often Horizon 1 is a “turnaround” or “build capability” Horizon 2 - is building on this and Horizon three is where you throw the opportunities you will research and discover more about over the coming years and months.