What Is Your Strategy?

Often in life and in business, we don’t have a clear strategy for what we’re trying to achieve. Taking the time out to focus on designing a strategy and discussing it with our team members is something we “don’t have time for”. Discussing what is expected of everyone during an undertaking and asking everyone to feedback with accountability is met with resistance, as if we are questioning each other’s ability rather than trying to help each other run more smoothly.

We become frustrated when one department doesn’t work well with another department and question whether we have the right people in play. We forget that, as skilled as we may be in our own arena, we seldom know how to do the job of others. Operations isn’t qualified in sales, and marketing doesn’t speak “finance”. HR deals with people whilst Procurement deals with product. And IT, well, nobody understands IT except IT…. So why is it that we think they should understand our needs, or that we understand theirs without having strategic conversations that unpack these things?

In Aviation, when the crew of an aircraft prepare for a flight, their strategy is multi-layered. Not only does it involve collecting information from various sources such as weather, cargo and passenger loads, possible traffic and route planning considerations; but various conversations go on between the crew. The Captain will discuss the overview for the flight and make sure that the whole crew…