a. the current position on a map (current state),
b. the ultimate destination (desired state),
c. the route (how management intend getting there),
d. the estimated time it should take to navigate to the intended destination.

It also allows the driver to monitor his or her progress towards the destination. If the driver meets an unexpected obstacle, such as an accident, road closures or a traffic jam, then the GPS can calculate an alternative route (contingency or scenario planning).

The business plan provides the organization with a road map for the future. If it is well crafted, it will inspire and unite everyone, engage and involve them.

How detailed should it be?

The business plan should contain enough information to provide a basis for action and for monitoring progress but not too detailed that it becomes a ‘paper weight’ that is never referred to.

What information does it contain?

1. Vision statement (What we ultimately want to become)

The vision provides a vivid mental picture of our desired state. It is perhaps one of the most challenging and difficult leadership tasks because it needs to be short, imaginative and aspirational. It is a statement of what the business will look like, feel like and be like once the vision is achieved. It needs to unite and inspire every person such that they understand what they need to do day-by-day to move towards achieving the vision. People need to become emotionally invested in the vision such that they are motivated to focused action.

Regrettably, many companies spend millions of dollars creating visions that have no meaning to its people.

An example of an inspirational vision is “We Make Unique Places in Sydney that the World Talks About.”

An example of an unimaginative vision statement is “We will be the Best Property Manager in Sydney”

2. Mission Statement (What we do and where we do it)

Our mission is a clear statement of our business boundaries. It clearly articulates what we do and the markets in which we operate – both now and in the future.

3. The Context within which the Business Operates

This is a summary of the current state of the marketplace and how it is likely to unfold in the future. Businesses undertake an ‘environmental scan’ that analyses and evaluates the relative attractiveness of the macro-environment and the business’s marketplace.

Analysis of the macro-environment includes the political, economic, social, ecological, technological, and international or global environments.

The marketplace will include an analysis of our customer groups and the competitive landscape.

Because this can be a really detailed analysis, you will want to have a summary of the key points in the business plan and place the detail in an appendix.

4. Our Key Objectives

This section talks to the desired future state in the short, medium and longer-terms. In order to ensure that we have focus, there should be no more than 3 – 7 key objectives. To qualify as an objective, each must comply with the SMARTE acronym so that management can effectively navigate from the current state to the desired state by measuring and managing performance to the objective. A SMARTE objective is:

- Specific
– Measurable
– Achievable
– Realistic
– Timely
– Ecological

5. Our Strategies and Action Plans

How management will move from the current state to the desired state is covered by our strategies and action plans. A precursor to developing strategies and action plans is to identify the Critical Strategic Issues. These are the issues that are preventing you from achieving more of your objectives.

We use the critical strategic issues as a point of reference to develop our strategies and action plans.

When developing strategies, management should consider every potential undesirable outcome or unintended consequence of their initiatives. These take the form of what is called contingency planning or scenario planning.

Strategies should contain:

-  Critical issues (why)
-  The assumptions we have made (what)
– The steps we will take (how)
-  Those responsible (who)
-  The timing of each strategy and action step (when)
-  Resources required, including capital expenditure, people, materials etc. (what)
-  Key performance indicators – KPIs (what)
-  Contingency plans (what if)

6. Financial Information Including Budgets

This section shows how the strategies and action plans will translate month-by-month into cash flow, profit or loss and a balance sheet for the business. Budgets showing income, costs and expenses and capital expenditure are prepared by function or division.

What’s Next?

Once you have developed your business plan, it is important to realise that “the map is not the territory”. It just helps you navigate the territory. To get to the desired destination, we must flawlessly execute, execute, execute.

No organisation can achieve excellence in all areas. Attempting to do this will result in trying to be all things to all people and nothing to anybody. Therefore, to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, every organisation needs to choose a few (2 to 4) areas that are important to its customers that it can focus on and achieve excellence in these areas.

So what happens to all the other areas? The figure below assists us to determine when partnering is appropriate and when it is not.

By mapping all the key processes that create value for customers in each product/service area, we can make a distinction between processes that are core or distinctive and processes that are non-core. Core processes that are unimportant to customers probably need to be re-engineered to minimise cost or increase customer value. Non-core processes that are unimportant to customers should be discontinued as they add cost to the business and no value to customers.

We distinguish between core and distinctive processes that are important to customers because they may be core (everyone must have them just to play the game) or they may be distinctive to us, providing us with some competitive differentiation. We need to maintain parity on the core capabilities and build excellence in areas that are distinctive.

Areas that are non-core but critical, such as the logistics of collecting milk from farms for milk production, need to be outsourced to organisations who can do these activities more efficiently and cheaper than you can. Once non-core but critical activities have been identified, we then seek to identify potential organisations to partner with that are cost-effective, reliable, financially stable and are aligned with our culture and philosophy.

Adding Value Through Strategic Partnering

1. Strategic partnering can potentially add value for you in one or more of the following areas:
2. Shorten time frames
3. Create new or improved performance
4. Lower costs and risks
5. Provide more value-in-use
6. Offer a stronger product line
7. Increase product appeal
8. Leverage complementary technology, knowledge or competence
9. Shape or influence industry forces

Case Study: A Management Consultant and a Publisher/Distributor

A Management Consultant in Australia wanted to commercialise some of its proprietary intellectual property (IP) for distribution to large organisations, government and other consultants both domestically and abroad. Its business model was to provide bespoke business-to-business (B2B) turnkey solutions to individual clients with a high level of personal service. It did not possess the capabilities to package standard products for distribution into mass markets.

The Publisher/Distributor believed that the IP was leading edge and world class, provided synergy with its existing product range and could easily be repackaged in standardised form for distribution through its broad marketing channels. Both parties believed that there was significant potential synergy and leverage. The Strategic Partnership could add value in several ways. It could potentially:

• Create new or improved performance
• Lower costs and spread risks
• Provide more value-in-use
• Offer a stronger product line
• Increase product appeal
• Enhance both parties through complementary technology, knowledge or competence

Choosing the right strategic partner is fundamental to a successful alliance

Four conditions are necessary to develop a successful alliance. Each, in and of itself is necessary but insufficient to sustain a strategic partnership. It requires the presence of all four necessary conditions for any chance of success. The four necessary conditions are:

1. Having a shared Vision and common objectives
2. Mutual commitment
3. Willingness to share risk
4. Willingness to build a a forgiving long-term interdependent relationship

A Framework for Strategic Partnering

Present/Future Internal/External Analysis

It is assumed that both parties to the partnership have done their homework and undertaken significant and rigorous analysis of both the external and internal operating environments. The parties will have concluded that the Strategic Partnership is necessary to strengthen their relative competitive positions and keep both parties relevant to their customers.

Building a Shared Vision

As a carefully constructed vision will unite, inspire and motivate both parties, it is one of the fundamental underpinnings necessary for a sustainable partnership that can withstand the storms of a dynamic environment over time. The joint vision statement must support and reinforce each party’s corporate vision yet be subservient to each.

The joint vision presents a dynamic picture of the future state of the partnership and venture, a description of what it will feel like, look like and be like in a numbers from now. It is a statement of destination. It will need to be developed collaboratively to ensure that it is ‘owned’ by all parties.

Critical Issues Management

When both parties are heavily dependent on the success of a partnership, the Critical Issues will be driven by each party’s needs and fears. Needs will be driven by the requirements and rules of the market place and financial targets. Needs motivate through inspiration and hope of potential gain. We want to move towards achieving our needs.

Fears will arise from the perception of vulnerability and will be driven by each party’s culture. Fears motivate us to move away from perceived pain or loss and are an example of motivation through desperation.

When the avoidance of fear is greater than the potential gains from satisfying the needs, then the strategic partnership is likely to dissolve in the near-term. When the potential upside (gain) exceeds the maximum downside (fear), the parties have a solid basis upon which to build a partnership.

In the above case study, the needs and fears of each party were articulated as follows:

Protecting each Party’s Interests

There are 8 areas that the parties must work on to protect their interests and nurture the partnership.

1. Protect key product features and values
2. Retain control of key relationships
3. Hold on to vital operating strengths
4. Safeguard critical technology
5. Preserve growth options
6. Maintain a strong organisation
7. Sustain financial strengths
8. Plan for unreliable relationships

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the difficulties associated with cultivating Strategic Partnerships, if managed diligently and in accordance with the above framework, both parties will benefit long-term. They will each be able to better leverage their own distinctive competences to sustain competitive advantage, unlock many synergies from collaborating, better manage and mitigate joint risk and deliver better returns for the shareholders of both companies.

Learn how you can obtain the benefits of Strategic FIT for your company and/or your alliances

Review by Robert Morris of Dallas Texas

This is an especially thought-provoking book which, as have so many others, evolved from an article published in the Harvard Business Review. According to Kim and Mauborgne, “[in italics] Blue ocean strategy [end italics] challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant…This book not only challenges companies but also shows them how to achieve this. We first introduce a set of analytical tools and frameworks that show you how to systematically act on this challenge, and, second, we elaborate the principles that define and separate blue ocean strategy from competition-based strategic thought.” There are six principles which are introduced and then discussed on pages 49, 82, 102, 117, 143, and 172, respectively.

Frankly, I was somewhat skeptical that this book could deliver on the promises made in its subtitle. In fact, the material provided by Kim and Mauborgne is essentially worthless unless and until decision-makers in a given organization accept the challenge, are guided and informed by the six principles, and effectively use the tools within appropriate frameworks. The responsibility is theirs, not Kim and Mauborgne’s. To assist their efforts, Kim and Mauborgne focus on several exemplary companies which have dominated (if not rendered irrelevant) their competition by penetrating previously neglected market space. They include the Body Shop, Callaway Golf, Cirque du Soleil, Dell, NetJets, the SONY Walkman, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, the Swatch watch, and Yellow Tail wine.

Of greatest interest to me is Kim and Mauborgne’s assertion that the innovations which enabled these companies to succeed with a Blue Ocean strategy did NOT depend upon a new technology. Rather, each company pursued a strategy which enabled it to free itself from industry boundaries. For Dell, that meant mass production of computers sold directly to consumers per each customer’s specifications. Quite literally, each sale is “customized.” For Callaway, creating an enlarged sweet spot to increase the frequency of solid contact for new or infrequent golfers just as, years ago, the enlarged Head racquet did so for new or infrequent tennis players. For Starbucks, creating a congenial environment within which to socialize, go online, or read while consuming coffee. All of these Blue Ocean strategies created new or much greater value for customers. Their emphasis is on the quality of experience, not on the benefits of a new technology.

According to Kim and Mauborgne, their research indicates that “the strategic move, and not the company or the industry, is the right unit of analysis for explaining the creation of blue oceans and sustained high performance. A strategic move is the set of managerial actions and decisions involved in making a major market-creating business offering.” The cornerstone of a Blue Ocean strategy is value innovation which occurs “only when companies align innovation with utility, price, and cost positions. If they fail to anchor innovation with value in this way, technology innovators and market pioneers often lay the eggs that other companies hatch.” For Kim and Mauborgne, value innovation is about strategy that embraces the entire system of a company’s activities. It requires companies to orient the whole system toward achieving a “leap” in value for both buyers and themselves. Kim and Mauborgne explain HOW to create uncontested market space wherein competition is essentially irrelevant.

To paraphrase Henry Ford, whether decision-makers think they can or think they can’t do that, they’re right.

To achieve sustainable superior performance a business must attract more loyal customers than its competitors. Every business attempts to achieve this but not many succeed.

Many organisations focus on attracting new customers whilst under-servicing their current customers. The result – customer defection. The cost of customer ‘churn’ can be crippling. This reminds me of a story.

One night a man dreamed that he had past away. He found himself standing in front of a lift and was considering whether to push up or down. He had been told so many stories about hell that he said to himself. “This is only a dream, why don’t I go down and see what hell is like”. So he pushed ‘down’.

When the elevator doors opened, he was greeted by voluptuous young women in grass skirts with bare tummies. Hawaiian necklaces were placed around his neck and a drink was put into his hands. He was wined and dined, played golf on terrific courses and had never been so well looked after in his entire life. He was brought back to reality by his wife shaking him and calling his name. She was telling him that he would be late for work if he didn’t get up immediately.

A few days later he really died and found himself in front of the same lifts that he had dreamed about a few days earlier. So naturally, he pushed the ‘down’ button. When the doors opened, he was greeted by the Devil. It was unbearably hot and he was given a large hammer and immediately put to work in atrocious conditions. He turned to the Devil and said, “what’s going on? A few nights ago, I came down here in a dream and was treated like a king. Now I come down here forever and you are treating me like a criminal. What happened?” The Devil replied “that was when you were a prospect. Now you are a customer”.

There are many reasons as to why customers defect:

1. Their patronage may not be valued

2. The company may be too internally focused

3. The product is seen as a commodity

4. Customers’ have no emotional attachment to the supplier

5. The value proposition may not be appealing to customers

6. The price that they pay may be perceived to be too high in relation to what they receive in exchange for their money

7. Competitors are better at some or all of the above

To achieve sustainable superior performance any company must consistently present win-win outcomes. See the figure below.

If customers feel that they are giving more than they are getting from the supplier, this results in a win-lose outcome from the perspective of the customer and is not sustainable. The customer feels ‘ripped off”.

If the supplier feels that it is giving more than it is getting, this is a lose-win outcome from the perspective of the supplier. This too, is not sustainable as the supplier feels it is not worthwhile.

The worst case is where both parties feel that they are giving more than they are getting, resulting in a lose-lose scenario. That is definitely not sustainable.

The only sustainable position is where both parties feel that they are receiving value for money.

The Strategic FIT Program will guide you to achieving a consistent win-win outcome. It will help you to build a large, strong and loyal customer franchise.  Loyal customers may even be prepared to pay a small premium for the real or perceived value that they receive. Loyal customers also help the supplier reduce its costs because it does not have to incur huge marketing expenditure to entice its customers. Furthermore, loyal customers will tell their friends, providing word of mouth advertising for the supplier. Not only is this free, but it is more powerful than traditional advertising approaches.

Furthermore, one of the cultural traits of superior performing businesses is that they continuously look for ways to reach more and more customers with the same or less infrastructure, time, effort energy and cost. They are also continuously seeking new or different ways to add value to the people that they reach.

We assist you to achieve a state of Strategic FIT walking and guiding you step-by-step through a process that starts with the customer, aligns the company’s service delivery to meet or exceed expectations and keeps the organisation relevant to its customers over time.

The Customer Module helps you to align service delivery to meet customer needs. It is our experience that over 80% of organisations get this wrong. They think that they understand customers’ needs and “talk passed their customers”. In this module we show you how to uncover current needs and how to elicit latent or unknown needs.

The Operating Environment Module recognises that no organisation operates within a vacuum – that it depends upon and is dependent upon its environment to succeed.  To deal with turbulence and uncertainty, we need to understand the forces driving and shaping our markets and how these are most likely to unfold over time. We walk and guide you through a process to scan your environment, understand your competitors and build potential scenarios.

Most companies today operate in slow growth, mature markets. Yet all players want to achieve growth that exceeds that of the market. The only way to achieve this, is to “take lunch away from the competition”. The Strategy Module assists you to develop  strategy to win in a competitive environment. We want to develop an offer that ‘customers cannot say no to’,  motivate and unite our people with an inspirational vision and position the business to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Most executives find this very challenging. We show you how it can be accomplished.

Unless the business powerfully engages its customers by mirroring their requirements and ‘speaks’ to them in a language that they understand, the company is unlikely to succeed long-term in winning and keeping customers. The organisation’s culture reflects its current capability to deliver customer and shareholder value. Accordingly,  The Culture Module helps leaders create and manage appropriate organisational change.

Leadership shapes the organisation’s future capabilities. The Leadership Module helps you build and nurture powerful and effective leadership coalitions at all levels within the business to shape, guide and lead the business to its desired or preferred future.

It is relatively easy to formulate strategy. It is far more difficult to execute well. The final Taking Action Module provides ongoing processes for keeping activity on track, deploying scarce resources effectively, and navigating towards the future – turning vision into reality.

“To know but not to do, is not yet to know“. Knowledge in and of iteself is useless! It is the effective application of that knowledge that makes the difference. Strategic FIT is the difference that makes the difference. We provide the knowledge and the support to give effect to the knowledge that you acquire on the Strategic FIT Program.

You can buy these Modules individually for US$395 each.

Or for a limited time we have an exclusive offer – All six Modules for US$1580. That is a saving of US$790.

ACT NOW and BUY THE BUNDLE!

We back up our confidence in all our products with a 90 DAY No Questions Asked 100% Money Back Guarantee!

By consistently applying 3 universal principles, Ivan asserts that any organisation can leverage its results. Check out the Strategic FIT Program in the store for more information

Ivan Nurick talks to ING on Thinking Strategically from Strategy Workshop on Vimeo.

The Competitor SWOT is a simple way to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses relative to a specified competitor and inform appropriate action you should take to close any performance gaps.

Review by Peter Hutton of Brisbane Australia.

Since reading it, I have made many changes in my life. The `Seven Secrets Of Magic’ have proven to come in handy on a daily basis. These lessons have helped me to create what I want, what I love. I’m eternally grateful to the author for this book.You can go your entire life looking for that special book that has it all. The book that will change your life forever. Open your heart. Transform you even.

Like the Holy Grail, it’s the book we seek that’s full of promise. It’s like looking for a magic bullet. Does it really exist? Why not!

The Magician’s Way by William Whitecloud comes very, very close to it. It is brilliant; It’s unique; And it’s mind-blowing!!!

Anyone interested in creating a life they would love needs to read this. If you are interested in things like `The Secret’ and subject matter like the laws of attraction you must read this book. The Magician’s Way is like The Secret on steroids. Really, it goes way beyond it.

When I read The Magician’s Way, I couldn’t put it down. I pretty much read it in one sitting. It was like I got pulled into the book as the story unfolded. It was more than just being captivated by this story. I became the main character. I went on this incredible life changing ride in his shoes that opened my eyes to my own greater truth. By the end of the book I sensed I had changed somehow. It opened my heart . An exciting new world had suddenly appeared.

I know that may sound over the top to some of you. But it’s true. The Magician’s Way profoundly touched me. It’s as the saying goes, `the truth will set you free’. What I experienced reading this book was exactly that.

Simply put, The Magician’s Way teaches you how to transform your outer world by changing your inner world. The book contains a series of lessons. The author calls them “The Seven Secrets Of Magic”. They are powerful lessons and I have found them to be very practical.

I couldn’t recommend a better book than The Magician’s Way. I loved it. You will too!!!

This book is not for those who aspire to be a leader. Rather, think of this book as the guidebook for a journey that connects you to life and culminates in the gift of leadership. From the forward from Peter Senge (which to me was best skimmed and reread midway through the book) to the last page, Truths were exposed and enjoyed. This book takes the premise that leading is serving and gives insight to the transformation we must make internally, not externally to become a leader.

For me though, this book was not about leadership or developing leadership. It is a book that helps you understand life in a new context. Synchronicity becomes the goal and the added benefits of leadership qualities become more of an after-thought.

Since reading the book and trying to consciously build in lessons from Joe in my life, I have seen remarkable changes in my life. It is still a journey not a destination, yet a more fulfilling journey.

Review by V. Young, Washington d.c.

This book is an easy read and points out how much control we do have over the circumstances under which we live. Ms. Adams shows how to think your way out of frustrating or non-productive sitations and create a more positive, effective, and satisfying life. Her method is easy and can be put into practice immediately – my husband picked my copy up off the night table, read the book in a weekend, and our communication improved almost instantaneously. This book would be good for anybody who wants to improve personally or professionally.