Abdul Wadud, CEO & Management Consultant, TRANSFORM
The purpose of any business is to make money. In order to earn money each business makes investment (Land, building, machine and people) and to finance the investment finds out appropriate sources of fund i.e.; equity, debt. A company who has gone through the proper methodology through fundamental and technical analysis and made his investment and financing decision is more likely to be ahead of others who didn’t do it.
For a running company irrespective of making the proper investment and financing decision process success would depend on consistency (Standard deviation) of outcomes. If the stream of income of a company is steadier than another company the company would be considered as more valuable or less risky and would be valued more in the market. This is applicable to all aspects quality, productivity, price, turnover, debt servicing capability, dividend, machine downtime, profitability, customer satisfaction, accident, labor unrest, innovation, growth, everything related with the company. Consistency is the most important thing but difficult to achieve without a synchronized alignment across all actives of the company, possibly executed through an overall strategy.
Strategy is a choice that distinguishes a company from others. It’s not being the best but being different and unique and maintaining it consistently or consistently progressing towards the long term goals, mission and vision, keeping in mind the core values of the company.
But before starting the journey towards developing a long term strategy it is most important to “Know thyself”. That is the owner must ask himself what his needs are and if he would like to take the risk of change – starting the journey towards developing a strategy. Depending on the size and nature of the company designing, approving, executing and reaching to the long term goals might take 3-5-7 years. Therefore it is the very important to remain passionate and committed, especially top management and core strategic management team.
Once top management decides to endeavor for an overall strategic plan, they first need to assess their current situation or status (Second “Know thyself”). The assessment can be done through internal recourses of the organization or through external consultants who have the expertise, experience, industry knowledge, associates and links and specialization to endeavor such venturesome projects. The benefits of deploying an external consultant is they can see through the organization without any preconceived perceptions, neutrally and an overall bird’s eye view. In order to design a proper strategic plan history, national and international developments, industry, company, number, market, process, people, aspiration, vibe, mindset, harmony, innovation, technology and synergy has to be considered and blended for the ultimate results. Of course there can be different paths to reach a destination and need to remain open during designing and agile during execution.
