Strategic Direction is made up of two elements; the Vision is driven by the Outside world and the Journey. The Journey is at the heart of Strategy. You have defined point B and you know where you are at Point A. The Journey defines how are you going to get there.
Ashton Bishop, Australian speaker from the organisation Step Change runs a workshop called “History’s greatest Strategists”. He has a set of cards of the great leaders from the past - Genghis Khan. Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Hannibal etc… and he asks “How would they have tackled the challenge?” This idea is that there are different strategies that get to the same destination. So, once the Vision is set (subject always to that iterative process of a Joined-Up check) the next step is to define the journey and the leadership teams values are likely to play a significant part in what that journey looks like.
That leads to the next set of questions and ideas. The next few steps can be made clear, but beyond a year or two we know it is speculative and things may change. We can not go across the water to reach the lighthouse, we have to follow the path and we do not know what surprises that may bring. It still amazes how really good businesses feel they can set and forget their 3 or 5 year plan and revisit in three years.
We can define, now, what we THINK the journey will entail. We can identify where we need to grow and evolve. We can define our success factors required to succeed and, for a business, how we can sustain our growth. We can explain the Horizons or phases that we might go through. No leader should try this alone; we are beginning to get away from the “Why?” into the “What?” and the “How?” and the senior team need to be involved. Visual tools help this process enormously.
