Business Builders Podcast
Strategic Planning - How do we get there?
Today's episode is part four of the Demystifying Strategic Planning series. Our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian talk about developing a strategy to get your business to where you have identified that it should go.
The topics covered in this first part of the series are:
- Recap and a definition of strategy
- Strategy and the map analogy
- The three marketplace strategies available to us:
- Strategy Number 1 - Cost Leadership
- Strategy number 2 - Differentiation
- Strategy Number 3 - Focus
- Internal business strategies to support our chosen marketplace strategy
- Topic recap and summary
- Tip 1 - Find people to ask you questions about your strategic plan
- Tip 2 - Find space to plan
- Tip 3 - Make a one page strategic plan
Helping businesses find their new shape.
SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia
Borough Markets
AI driven digital transformation company that exist to level the digital marketing playing field by
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Today's episode is part four of the Demystifying Strategic Planning series. Our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian talk about developing a strategy to get your business to where you have identified that it should go.
The topics covered in this first part of the series are:
- Recap and a definition of strategy
- Strategy and the map analogy
- The three marketplace strategies available to us:
- Strategy Number 1 - Cost Leadership
- Strategy number 2 - Differentiation
- Strategy Number 3 - Focus
- Internal business strategies to support our chosen marketplace strategy
- Topic recap and summary
- Tip 1 - Find people to ask you questions about your strategic plan
- Tip 2 - Find space to plan
- Tip 3 - Make a one page strategic plan
Helping businesses find their new shape.
SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia
Borough Markets
AI driven digital transformation company that exist to level the digital marketing playing field by
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Welcome to part four of our series about demystifying strategic planning. In today's episode we're talking about once we know where we want to go as a business, how do we get there? Ron talks about the benefit of setting aside clear time to think about strategy on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, and we discussed the advantage of developing a one page strategic plan. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.
Ron Tomlian:And I'm Ron Tomlian.
Brenton Gowland:And, Ron again, it's great to be back here on our series about demystifying strategic planning.
Ron Tomlian:Yes, it is. And we're keeping to our schedule. I'm very impressed.
Brenton Gowland:Well, actually, we started right at the beginning, we said that everyone just wants to jump into the strategy part. And that's where we're at today. So why have we waited so long, Ron, to get to the part where we're actually doing the strategy?
Ron Tomlian:Well, because you can't actually do the strategy until you've answered the first two questions. Where are we now? And where do we want to be?
Brenton Gowland:And on that. We probably should just review what those questions were. So what were the four plus one questions?
Ron Tomlian:The first question, where are we now?
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:Second question. Where do we want to be?
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:Third question. How do we get there?
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:Fourth question. How will we know when we've arrived?
Brenton Gowland:And the plus one?
Ron Tomlian:And the plus one is why are we doing this in the first place?
Brenton Gowland:Correct. And so today, we're on the how do we get that part? Which really is the exciting part that we talked about, everyone wants to jump into first.
Ron Tomlian:Everyone wants to talk about strategy, and it's probably the most misunderstood and overused term in the business lexicon.
Brenton Gowland:Fair enough. Everyone wants to be a strategist, I think.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely.
Brenton Gowland:It's a nice title to have on your business card, yeah.
Ron Tomlian:It sounds very impressive.
Brenton Gowland:That's right. So look, before we jump into things and we're gonna keep today efficient, because we've got a lot to talk about. We'll just talk about our sponsors. And so our first sponsor Ron is?
Ron Tomlian:Borough Markets!
Brenton Gowland:Borough Markets. Yes. And what do they do?
Ron Tomlian:No, you can tell me what they do.
Brenton Gowland:Borough Markets they help you market yourself online if you want to get some help with artificial intelligence helping you to find the right market then Borough Markets are the right people to talk to that www.boroughmarkets.com.au spelt B-O-R-O-U-G-H. See, there you go. That's what they do. And they've even as this great podcast studio.
Ron Tomlian:Fantastic. And there's SA Business Builders where you can tell us about them. Okay, so that's a network of people interested in building their businesses by doing what I'd call real networking, which is about building relationships with people so that they feel comfortable doing business together in South Australia.
Brenton Gowland:Great. And our first event for 2022 happens in early April, and everyone will be finding out about that soon. It's pretty exciting, because we've got a bunch of young guns helping us with this one Ron.
Ron Tomlian:Fantastic. I love the term young guns because I hate guns. And I'm not there anymore, so fantastic.
Brenton Gowland:Fair enough. Well, we've had some debate about whether the age cuts off for a young gun.
Ron Tomlian:It ain't me I can tell you that much.
Brenton Gowland:I think we've come to the 35 year old age group below that you're a young gun above that you're experienced.
Ron Tomlian:Fantastic.
Brenton Gowland:I'm not saying people under 35 aren't experienced is just a kind way of saying that you're not a young gun anymore.
Ron Tomlian:I feel comfortable with not being a young gun anymore.
Brenton Gowland:They do the what is it? The 40? Under 40 Are the awards for people under 40, who have done really great things in business, I think maybe we should say 40 is the cut off then.
Ron Tomlian:Maybe.
Brenton Gowland:So if your 39, you're still young gun!
Ron Tomlian:I'd like to see that.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah, fair enough. And our last sponsor is, of course adapt CO and that's my business. And so I come in and do outsourced marketing for people as a CMO in their businesses, and really help them get from point A to point B, based on what their strategy is. Funnily enough, we're talking about strategy today, Ron.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, and hopefully demystifying some of that.
Brenton Gowland:Okay, so let's get into our topic today. Okay, so we're talking today about the question, how do we get to where we want to go? And we've, we've already established in the last episode, so if you haven't listened to it, listen to the last three episodes, but particularly the last episode.
Ron Tomlian:And I just want to say it, I want to recap a little bit.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah.
Ron Tomlian:We've spent time thinking about the DNA of the organisation, which is its values its purpose and articulated a shared vision, what we want to achieve in the future at a certain point in time. So where we want to be. We flesh that out with objectives to be very clear about what where we want to be really means and what we need to do to make that vision or what we have to have achieved to make that vision a reality. Yes, only at that point, when you can answer those two things about looking at where we are now and where we want to be. Can you even start thinking about how we're going to get there. And that's what strategy is all about.
Brenton Gowland:Correct. And we've been using a map analogy the whole time.
Ron Tomlian:I love that because until you determine where you start from.
Brenton Gowland:Point of origin.
Ron Tomlian:And where you want to be the destination, it's useless to talk about what route we're going to take, or what vehicle we're going to use, because without those two points, it just doesn't make any sense.
Brenton Gowland:Right. So and in just paraphrasing what you're saying, we're saying, there's a real, there's a bunch of really hard work to do, which doesn't have to be hard. It's just time consuming. And it involves thought and, and proper consideration and research to really understand the foundational things that in a sense, will form the framework for the decisions we're going to make moving forward. Now, you and I were talking earlier, and we were talking about a definition for strategy. So we might actually start there because, you know, what is strategy really mean Ron?
Ron Tomlian:As I said, it's, it's used in so many different ways. And it's overused, and people love the term strategic, they put strategic against everything, because it makes it sound more impressive. Strategy in its raw form and you can look up definitions on strategy, Google it, I don't care. How do we deploy the resources of the organisation to achieve its objectives? Now, if you use that as a term for strategy, it's how do we get there? Okay, it's dependent on having objectives in the first place. So you can't develop a strategy unless you have objectives.
Brenton Gowland:It's also dependent on having resources in the first place. Because you're saying how do we deploy the resources we've got?
Ron Tomlian:Well, understanding your resources, yes, the resources you have now and the resources that you will need in order to get where you want to be.
Brenton Gowland:So if we're taking this back to the map analogy, how does that then look?
Ron Tomlian:Okay, so yeah, I love that the map analogy, the objectives and the vision define the definition, or the destination of the organisation.
Brenton Gowland:Yep
Ron Tomlian:The strategy defines if you like, the route that we're going to take.
Brenton Gowland:Yes
Ron Tomlian:Snd that. But supporting that is the mode of transport that you use.
Brenton Gowland:So are we going to go on a plane? Are we going to drive a Mini? Are we going to drive a four wheel drive? Are we going to go on the bus.
Ron Tomlian:Yes. So strategy involves all those things about making decisions on what mechanism or what things we're going to need in order to get there.
Brenton Gowland:And so the things we're going to need are things like resources, like what do we have at our disposal to help us get there? So again, you might choose to fly if you've got enough resource, and obviously, that's getting a bit cheaper today, with the price of petrol, it's cheaper to fly to Bali than it is to fill up your tank.
Ron Tomlian:Yes. And rarely do you do it all by yourself as a person. So you have other people who are involved in this. And what sort of skills and capabilities do they have?
Brenton Gowland:Yeah.
Ron Tomlian:And what processes does the organisation use in order to fulfil its objectives? And that's about how does it deliver value to its customers?
Brenton Gowland:So we know where we want to go, the resources then become, you know, part of that framework for making the decision about what mode of transport we're going to use and how we're going to approach the route we're going to take, you know, is it gonna be this way or that way, etc.
Ron Tomlian:And I separate the route from the mode of transport and all those other decisions that we have to make because when people talk about business strategy, they often talk about one area in particular, which is operating in the marketplace. How do we operate in the marketplace? How do we compete against our competitors? How do we deliver value to customers? That's the focus of a lot of discussion about business strategy.
Brenton Gowland:And in my view, that's almost like the route.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. But there's also questions about finance, because if we remember it, the balanced scorecard approach is there are financial objectives, which is what the owners are interested in. There are market and customer objectives, which is what we were just talking about, there are business process objectives, which is how do we provide value to customers into the processes of delivering to our customers? And the final one is the growth and people aspect of the organisation. Those objectives are about how do we develop the capabilities to deliver better processes to operate in the marketplace more effectively, to be able to deliver the financial objectives of the owners. Okay, so it's, it's structured as hierarchical
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:Now, what's really important is when you look at the the marketing part of it, the route, and that's why I use that that term as separate from the other decisions. People like Michael Porter, and it's stood the test of time, suggested that there are really only three strategies available to organisations. Number one, this was his three generic strategies. treatise. Number one was cost leadership.
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:Now, first thing that needs to be identified here. Cost leadership is not about cost to the organisation, its cost to the customer.
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:So you could call it price leadership, and that's a very valid strategy and a lot of organisations thrive on that.
Brenton Gowland:And is that just lowest price though, is that what you're talking about? Or is because price can be, a strategy can be to be a higher price.
Ron Tomlian:Oh, Yeah. Yeah. But then we're talking about something different.
Brenton Gowland:Okay.
Ron Tomlian:This is price leadership. In other words, I'm going to be the lowest price in the marketplace. I'm going to be the leader in that area. And you've got to think about price in terms of what people expend to get your the value that they're looking for.
Brenton Gowland:So I think about price I think about people like Bunnings. Lowest prices guaranteed.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, absolutely. But price can be about other things just rather than just dollars.
Brenton Gowland:Right.
Ron Tomlian:Because when I consume a product, or I purchase a product, I have to expend a whole bunch of different things. There's dollars, no question, there's time, there's energy, and there's all sorts of different forms of energy. Right. I might expend energy in terms of thinking, I might expend energy in terms of emotions, I might expend energy in terms of by feelings. So all of those things need to be considered, you know, as an example, time nowadays is really valuable to me.
Brenton Gowland:Absolutely.
Ron Tomlian:And so if I can provide same value with you having to expend less time to get that value, then isn't that a lower price?
Brenton Gowland:Yes, because it requires less energy on our behalf to acquire what it is we want.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely. And that's sort of the definition of value definition of value, very simple value equals what I put in, or what I should say, what I get out minus what I put in. And what I put in is all the things like dollars, time, energy, etc. Benefits. Well, I've got to think about what what I'm getting out of this. And we do those value equations in our head as consumers all the time, I might find that for the sake of argument, I'm looking for a pen, and I want to buy 100 of them. And I can buy it down at a local store, which is a walking distance from my office for $1 apiece, so I'm going to spend$100, I might find that actually, I can find I can get that pen at a store five kilometres away for 70 cents. So I'm not going to spend $70 for 100. But I got to get the get the time to get into the car, I've got to spend the petrol to get there. I've got to find this place. I've got to navigate the the store itself and find out where this bargain is. All of that is energy that I've got to expend.
Brenton Gowland:So it's a convenience factor.
Ron Tomlian:Well, convenience is all about what value is there in it for me.
Brenton Gowland:That's why people like UberEATS are doing so well because people don't want to get off the couch.
Ron Tomlian:Okay, so we could go down this rabbit borough. We could go down this rabbit borough for a long time talking about the concept of price leadership across leadership.
Brenton Gowland:Okay, so we've got that that's one strategy that Michael was talking about, Michael Porter.
Ron Tomlian:Second strategy available puts people in the marketplace area and this is of the balanced scorecard, is
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:The third is focus. differentiation. How am I different from my competitors?
Brenton Gowland:Right. On what basis do I provide more value because of who I am in the
Ron Tomlian:And this is saying, You know what, I'm not going to way I deliver the services or the product? And there's a whole bunch of bases for differentiation that exist, it could be differentiation on the basis of location. I'm the best in this area. It could be differentiation on the basis of the skills of my people. I've got the smartest people. It could be differentiation on the basis of exclusivity, nobody else has what I have. There's a whole bunch of basis and you can look this up in books to the enth degree, especially books on marketing. try and provide services across the marketplace, I'm going to become very specific about the customers and the segment of the market that really values what I do.
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:And I'm going to understand that segment and no one's going to understand it like I do.
Brenton Gowland:Yes.
Ron Tomlian:And I'm going to provide value on the basis of what that segment of the market really wants.
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:And you can do that then on the basis of focusing to be a lower price or focusing to be different.
Brenton Gowland:Or a bespoke service.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, well, that's what a bespoke service really means. S o there's really only three generic strategies and a lot of people have talked about and others, there's a different format for the strategies. Wiersema came up with things like customer intimacy, and so on, when you delve down into them, it's the same thing, customer intimacy equates to focus quite frankly. So this has stood the test of time. So it's worth thinking in that area of the marketplace, the customer, it's worth thinking about, what strategy am I going to pursue. Now, that's not the only strategy that you need to think about. But it's this strategy that sort of links everything together, because you are operating in the marketplace for the purpose of customer providing customer value.
Brenton Gowland:Well, this is the key thing that people need to decide, because everything else we've talked about falls off the back of that. So we've decided where we are, we've decided where we're going. And this is how we operate in the marketplace. So like you said earlier, this is the route we're going to go along.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah.
Brenton Gowland:So things that influence that, of course, like we talked about earlier. What kind of resources do we have? And you know, what's our mode of transport but that almost talks about volume of you know, how we're going to approach this strategy that we choose.
Ron Tomlian:It is central because it is the one thing that's outside the organisation Well, not really I mean, things like access to capital and so on outside the organisation as well. But they're dependent on how the organisation looks and operates according to finances.
Brenton Gowland:So when we're deciding how we're going to get to where we're going to go, in other words, we're really looking at the strategy part now after making decisions about, you know, where we are, where we're going to go, we really have, in basic terms, three key strategies that we can choose from.
Ron Tomlian:in terms of how we operate in the marketplace, how we operate. Now, there's also financial strategies, how do we access the capital, we need to be able to do them, there's the business processes of the organisation.
Brenton Gowland:And I might just stop you there. But that breaks down like if we're looking at strategy, there's, you know, there's what we do in the marketplace. And then there's what we got to do in our business to facilitate....
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely.
Brenton Gowland:What we want to do in the marketplace. So what you're talking about now is what we need to do in the business to facilitate the path we've chosen to take.
Ron Tomlian:In the marketplace. Absolutely right. And that's why I loved the way you articulated this idea between the route, which is the business strategy, how we operate in the marketplace, and the mode of transport.
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:And those other decisions.
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:And it is an iterative process, because we might say, for the sake of argument, that this, we're going to choose a cost leadership strategy, which means we have to develop machine or have machines do a lot of our production. We don't have those machines at the moment. So we have to have access to capital. And we have certain machines at the moment that are not that fantastic. So we might say, Okay, well, we'd like to be there. But it's going to be outside the timeframe that we're talking about. So we might need to change. It's like saying, Okay, if I decide that I've got a four wheel drive available to me to get to Sydney.
Brenton Gowland:We can go over rocks, and Creek and Dale.
Ron Tomlian:And we can go through the Simpson Desert and all that sort of fun stuff. But if I've only got a mini miner available to me.
Brenton Gowland:It would be a lot of fun.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, absolutely. But I'm kind of constrained to bitumen roads.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah.
Ron Tomlian:Okay, so my route has to change according to what resources, I might decide along the way, this is using that analogy to the enth degree, I will get to Broken Hill, in my mini, which is all paved. And then in Broken Hill, I'm gonna buy a four wheel drive, and I can get the Sydney any way I want. Now I can go full wheel driving along the way, because now I have extra resources that I didn't have before.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah that's great.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, so it's the same sort of thing, we have to decide what sort of resources we need to acquire along the way, which has some financial implications, and so on.
Brenton Gowland:And I think one thing it's probably worth talking about is like this level of strategy is pretty high level, right? Because when we choose these things, and we, as directors, or business owners, or boards, or whoever the group is that's controlling these strategic decisions, we will put these things in place, but then it comes down to our people and the skills and the resources within the business to then put flesh on the bones of those strategies and go right, this is how we're going to fulfil that.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, and this is the relationship between the strategic plan, which is usually, not always, I mean, people have to had to start developing strategic plans that were only three months long during the, as an example, pandemic, because the environment was so unreliable and so changeable, and it had significant impacts on the business. But usually, strategic plans occupy multiple years. So the relationship between the strategic plan and the annual business plan is that the strategic plan informs long term what we intend to do by a certain point in time, and then annually, how we're going to achieve the first step towards
Brenton Gowland:And usually, when you create the strategic that plan. plan, that business plan you're talking about then becomes off as a backbone. Right here's how we're going to put it into play.
Ron Tomlian:And it's all about actions. And you know, I like to have a format where you talk about the objectives and these they stay.
Brenton Gowland:Yep, so we've already talked about that in the last episode.
Ron Tomlian:The strategies stay pretty much the same, they rarely change unless the environment changes significantly, but then the actions for the year will be dependent on where we are along the route. Okay, so it's, they are very much informed by what we're talking about today, which is the strategy and what we're going to be talking about next time, which is how will we know how far we are along the way? And how will we know when we've arrived? Yeah, great. So their the indicators.
Brenton Gowland:So in recap, when we're looking at strategy based on what we've been talking about today, there's a couple of major decisions we need to make, which is you know, about how we're going to operate in the market, or back to our map analogy, the route we're going to choose. And there's from Michael Porter methodology, there's three key areas or three key strategies we can choose. And then once we've chosen that, and it's also influenced by this we then need to look at in the business or what's our mode of transport the vehicle, how are we going to, you know, make this journey so what do we need to do in the business in a few key areas and that might be sales and marketing. It might be the finance area, it might be the people area, and it might be the business processes area. So those things need to then have strategies in play, to be able to fulfil what we want to do in the market. And once we've done all of that we've pretty much got, or made those decisions, because strategy is really about making decisions, as you talked earlier about how we're going to deploy the resources that we have to get to where we want to go. And then we've basically got our strategy put together. Yes?
Ron Tomlian:Yep. And it should stop at that point. It should be high level, it shouldn't c onfuse you know, we're going to develop this brochure, we're going to undertake a revamp of this website. That's detail that sits way below it.
Brenton Gowland:And from my experience, a lot of people want to drum into that detail straightaway. Because I remember, even with one business that I've been working with that they, we've been talking about, you know, business processes and what we're going to do, and then their immediate question is, oh what software we're going to use with that? I'm like hold the bus. We need to really understand what we're going to do, and that will form the brief.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely. So strategic planning sits at a higher level that talks about major decisions on our resource allocation for the organisation, and how are we going to deploy those resources.
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:Okay. So that's why it's called strategic.
Brenton Gowland:And the actual business plans separate to that which we can address another time after we finished this series.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's the next level down. It's about the implementation, which is absolutely critical. But you can't get to the point of implementation until you know what you're trying to do.
Brenton Gowland:Yep, I think I think that's a really good place to resolve this podcast that we're doing at the moment its really talking about, this is the high level decisions.
Ron Tomlian:Yes.
Brenton Gowland:And then it's up to our resources, our team and the other people in the business to then help us put flesh on those bones. So that's when we engage the sales and marketing team, or we engage the CM, the CFO, or the accounts, people or the HR people, or whatever structure we've got in the business, whether it's a GM.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, and those are the teams that whose plans themselves are informed by the strategic plan of the organisation.
Brenton Gowland:So just out of interest, if you're a business, that's because I think people listening, we've got all sorts of different businesses. So if you're a business owner, and you're on your you're on your own, and making all these kinds of decisions, and then you've got a team, which is a lot of businesses, that differs too. If you've got, you know, a management team and directors who can run these sessions together and most strategic planning sessions, I've seen it work really well, you have an outside facilitator come in, because they ask the questions that get all the right bits of information on the table. So my question just in finishing is, if you're a business owner, in your own business versus, you know, a directorship, how would you handle strategic planning differently?
Ron Tomlian:Well, for individual business owners, it's going through the process and asking yourself the questions and getting used to asking yourself the questions. It's no different really, except for the fact that you don't have to communicate it to anyone.
Brenton Gowland:Who's your strategic planning team, though, because a strategic plan you can do on your own, but it's often good to bounce it off people.
Ron Tomlian:It's a great idea to have other people specifically things like advisory boards or, or just customer groups or suppliers to bounce ideas off of, but at the end of the day, it's going, you don't have to communicate a lot because quite frankly, it's you.
Brenton Gowland:But strategies need to be tested.
Ron Tomlian:Oh, strategies are tested in the marketplace, or the thinking behind strategies need to be tested.
Brenton Gowland:That's what I'm getting at.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah. And that's where you can, you can bounce ideas off other people. And the more people you do, the more you know, people talk about commercial in confidence, you've got to take that into consideration. But the more
Brenton Gowland:But what I really like about TEC in your people you bounce it off, you'll get perspectives. You know, quite frankly, this is why I run TEC groups, or groups like that, because it gives people perspectives from outside their organisation, which is fantastic, because it's easy to sort of start drinking, as the Americans say, start drinking your own Kool Aid, believing your own rhetoric. kind of scenario is that you've got other business owners who are in the same position as you who can actually bounce ideas off of. So if you were doing strategic planning, you can test it out with other business owners who might run businesses that are completely different to yours, but they're in the same seniority level and the same responsibility level as you. And that becomes really valuable to have that kind of Think Tank around you.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely. And quite frankly, we do that. you know, different people host and they present their strategic plan to the group. The idea behind that is the group is their litmus test, and the group is there, you know, asking the questions, why are you doing this way? Why do you think of going down that path? Why are you looking at that marketplace? Asking the questions that really we should be asking ourselves, but it's good to have someone else outside looking in the people who can see the wood for the trees. As the saying goes.
Brenton Gowland:And if I was going to invest in anything as a business owner, and I have, it's always been getting that outside perspective when we're looking at the strategy stuff because that's where it's really important to help with those decisions because sometimes you can be just too close to it. So always getting people to be involved in helping you think through the strategy, I think is a valuable and wise thing as long as they're the right people. And that comes out of choice.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely, absolutely, to my way of thinking critical, but there's so many people who don't do it.
Brenton Gowland:Okay. And to finish off, I might do something a bit different. Ron, what would your advice be to business people out there who are about to start getting stuck into the strategy thinking within their businesses? Now, we know that people do strategy at all different points of the year, but what would you say to people who are getting ready for strategy now?
Ron Tomlian:Find space in your day, or your week, or your month to be thinking about this on an ongoing basis, don't do it as a one off and think it's gonna last forever, because it doesn't. Also, and this is this is the hard part and why people often get people around them as they build their business to take away the the tasks that they that make this difficult, you need to have that space. I remember one guy in one of my groups, I was talking to him about developing a strategic plan. And I said, look, you're gonna need about a day. He wasn't going to involve any of his other people. He was he wanted to do it himself. As a first pass, I said, you're going to be need about a day. The next time we got together, he proudly showed me his diary and a half an hour here and a half an hour there and an hour there. And between meetings, and it added up to eight hours over the course of a month.
Brenton Gowland:I remember you talking about this at another point. And it's good thinking for someone who's busy, but it doesn't make any practical sense if you need to actually spend time ruminating on something.
Ron Tomlian:And I said to him at the time, look, in that half hour, you're going to be thinking about the last meeting you were in and the meeting you're about to go in, you're not going to have the headspace to think about the important things, you really need blocks of time. So if I was giving a business owner, any advice, I'd be saying to him or her block out some time, if I was talking to larger organisations, as I do, the really important thing is to use the strategic planning process and the eventual plan as a mechanism for communicating the intent of the organisation. That's really critical.
Brenton Gowland:And look my, and I agree with all that. And my piece of advice to people who are about to undertake business strategy, is that you, I really would suggest that you need to be able to get your strategy on one single page. And that's a real challenge. And there's a lot of frameworks out there to do that. And the reason for that is, then it becomes easier to articulate through your organisation, easier to report to because as you said, a strategy is something that you need to live and breathe, but you need to revisit it. And I think when it's on a page, it becomes a digestible piece of information that you can align your reporting to, and that you can then review whether it's quarterly, yearly, six monthly, it takes a lot of work to make something simple. And if you get it into a one page format, then it's executable, because there's bigger documents, you know, where do you start, you might have action plans, and so forth. But they become difficult to execute. And the one thing with strategy is doing it and then actually putting it into action, and a one page plan helps.
Ron Tomlian:And look, I'll tell you, I'll finish off with a little story. I was brought in by an organisation to help them with their strategic plan. They had multiple strategic plans that they developed before, but nobody was using them in the organisation because they didn't understand them. We started off the process of a strategic planning document or developing a document. And at the first pass of that document, people said, this is useless to us. I said, I'm a little bit sorry, I thought you wanted to be used by the organisation. They said you don't understand it's not complicated enough. And so we decided to part company me happily, because I could see the same problem occurring over and over again, for that organisation. They were they were beautiful documents that no one used. And you can get gilt edged strategic plans that are fabulous paperweights, or great doorstops.
Brenton Gowland:Yep.
Ron Tomlian:The important thing is implementation. And we'll talk about that later on.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah.
Ron Tomlian:And one step towards that. So it's a nice segue into next time, one step towards that is having measures that you use to identify are we tracking along towards the objectives and the vision that we have?
Brenton Gowland:Correct.
Ron Tomlian:How do we know we were getting there? And how will we know when we've arrived?
Brenton Gowland:And from my experience, you can put the whole lot on one page and then that slips beautifully into the board notes and your report on each of the streams or it becomes part of your induction packs.
Ron Tomlian:Let's not give away all the secrets.
Brenton Gowland:No, but it's just I've seen it again and again, exactly like you're talking about. That the simpler you can make it, the more high level you can make it, the more easy it is for people to digest. And then it's actionable.
Ron Tomlian:You know, it gets down to the same thing. People talk about great visions for organisations and you think about Steve Jobs vision and apple on every desk. Yeah, fantastic.
Brenton Gowland:Okay, well Ron, that was really good, a long conversation this time around and I think it deserves it. So it's goodbye from me
Ron Tomlian:And goodbye for me.
Brenton Gowland:And we will see you all in a fortnight where we're going to be talking about Ron?
Ron Tomlian:The indicators for the organisation. In other words, how will we know when we've arrived?
Brenton Gowland:How will we know when we've arrived? That is our next episode on the Business Builders podcast. And until then. It's bye from me. We've just done that.
Ron Tomlian:All right.
Brenton Gowland:And bye from me. So, Goodbye, everybody have a great fortnight. We'll talk to you soon.
Ron Tomlian:Ok Bye.
Brenton Gowland:Bye.
