Anatomy of a strategy

1. Anatomy of a Strategy
www.theevansgroupllc.com
Rodney Mogen
Desired/
Undesired
Outcome
Execution
Steps
Resourses
Needed
The Cost
The
Overall
Goal

2. Anatomy of a Strategy
www.theevansgroupllc.com
Being strategic is a phrase that is thrown around all the time, from the corporate road to the
government to schools. However strategy is something that is not taught but is expected to be
implemented. What goes into a good strategy?
First what does strategy mean? It is not a plan, it is not a list of steps to follow, and instead it is series of
ideas and a vision that one will follow to accomplish a particular objective. In other words think of a
strategy like a blueprint for a house. The strategy of building the house is the blueprint. It is a series of
ideas written down to give you a guideline but the different steps you take is the execution and the plan
of how you are going to make the blueprint real.
Once you understand what a strategy is then you need to understand the 5 key parts to every strategy.
1. The Overall Goal – Most strategies are just a compilation of ideas and people wonder why they
fail. You need to see the end have an idea how you want it to come out. Part of a good strategy
is understanding what might happen and might not and building that into the strategy. You can
only figure this out if you understand what the goal is.
2. The Cost: Time, Money People - This is the most common part of a strategy that is missing after
the goal. Every good strategy will have a cost whether it will be in time, money, people or all of
the above. These are concerns that need to be addressed and figured into the overall strategy.
3. Resources needed - Understanding the cost is important but one also needs to know exactly
what resources will be needed to figure out the costs. Most strategies have this identified,
which is good, but one needs to understand how to use them effectively as well.
4. Execution steps – How will you execute the strategy? While the strategy is not an execution
plan, when one is putting together that strategy you need to put thought into how you will
execute it so you can put a strong strategic plan together.
5. Desired/ Undesired Outcome - You need the goal of what you want to accomplish but you also
have to have an expectation of how things will happen. An example might be that you may
want to grow your company by 20% and you put a strategy in place to accomplish that.
However, based on putting together the strategy, your desired expectation might be 30% if you
execute properly. Your goal was only 20% but you feel it is likely to be 30%. One should still set
the strategy at 20%, recognizing there could be greater or lesser success.
Once you have these parts of a strategy conceived then you can put the strategy together. There are
four steps to putting together a strategy.
 Ask yourself what do you want to accomplish? What will it look like? What happens if it does,
or does not succeed as you planned?
 Be honest about the answers. Too often when putting together a strategy people might ask
these questions but they either doesn’t full answer the questions or are not honest with
themselves about the answers. Be blunt with your own thinking, not optimistic, or pessimistic,
but realistic.
 What do you need? Putting together a SWOT analysis will help you develop your strategy plan.
This should be identifying your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and
figuring out to best fit everything in.

3. Anatomy of a Strategy
www.theevansgroupllc.com
 What are the obstacles that will stand in the way? This is the key to a realistic analysis of
strategy. Part of what you need, and being realistic, and using SWOT involves:
1. Economic Conditions – will there be too much competition or not enough dollars to make it
worth it. Can the economic conditions change mid way through and if so how do you need
to react?
2. People problems – will there be a time where you will need more employees or less? If you
have to bring people in how will training slow you down and affect the overall strategy. On
the contrary what if someone leaves how will the project sustain itself.
3. Additional Resources or lack of resources - One example of this is production problems if
you are relying on inventory to help you. When car companies went to Just in Time
inventory it worked great for a while. But when one of their vendors had a hiccup it
affected everyone down the line and thus killed production. The solution was to still stay
with the Just in Time inventory strategy but have a back-up strategy for a five day supply
storage. This works and keeps the plants humming. SO what are your back up plans?
4. Labor Issues – While you might have great labor relations with your employees if you are
dependent on other suppliers to implement your strategy what is their relationship with
you? Do you have contingencies due to a strike or a layoff from your suppliers? Companies
in union dominated industries can face this problem regularly. For example, the business
traveler might be faced with a travel problem to see their customers if an airline goes on
strike. Understanding your back up plans, knowing what the issues are and understanding
their back up plans helps you to adjust your strategy.
5. Mother Nature – This is the hardest obstacle to deal with, as you never know when it
happens. It might be a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, hail storm or flooding or even
extreme heat or cold. Your strategic plan must contain contingencies for what can go
wrong.
The anatomy of a strategy is setting the outline for the plan, and then executing to the plan.
Smart business people regularly study their strategy as it progresses and perform an autopsy
on what is not working; they then adjust the strategy around what the autopsy showed.