Mark Faust works with owners, CEOs and sales managers who want to grow their businesses.
He says strategy should be like a laser, which can become sharper, more intense, brighter and more effective. And he recommends business managers review their strategy on a quarterly basis.
“Routinely sharpening your strategy gives clarity to your vision to be intensified with greater detail,” Faust says. “What gives you competitive advantage, your points of divergence from the competitive alternatives, can be intensified as well.
How and where you invest your resources, your strategic focus, can be intensified by strategically abandoning weak markets, customers, products and practices and reallocating resources to areas with higher return.”
Faust says objectives must be set in seven key areas:
1. Marketing
2. Innovation
3. Culture
4. Resource requirements
5. Productivity
6. Community, industry and social responsibility
7. Profitability requirements
Semi-Annual Review of Role Focus
The frequency of the strategy recalibration is key, and it’s a must to involve your team.
“When recalibrating your business’s targets quarterly and setting new objectives, it should be done with your team,” he says. “The more this rhythm takes hold, the more your team will contribute innovations and improvements through new objectives.”
He suggests all managers should have one-on-one realignment meetings with each direct report semiannually.
“There are tools to help to illuminate constraints and opportunities for an organization’s management team as well as keep everyone focused on dedicating an appropriate amount of time and focus to the appropriate objectives, projects and priorities,” he says.
Accountability Tools
Faust says business leaders point to their boards, advisers and customers for input.
“We all have blind spots, and having growth advisers and some type of board sharpens your leadership, strategy and execution,” he says. “Quarterly in-depth interviews with customers are one of the most commonly missed steps involved in developing strategy. These interviews should be a requirement.”
Faust has seen how having a third-party interview a sample of customers every quarter brings innovation and new opportunities. He credits this idea to the founder of strategy, Peter Drucker, who said if you’re not listening to the customer regularly, then you’re not doing strategy.
Growth Is Relative
Not all businesses can experience exponential growth.
“But odds are you know right now what type of and how much potential growth your company could have if you execute accordingly,” Faust says. “The key is to use the best practices above and get all you can out of all you’ve got.”
He encourages farmers to see how executing strategy as a quarterly process within their teams will uncover more and more hidden opportunities that facilitate business growth.
Here more from Mark Faust at the upcoming Top Producer Summit. Click here to register.
