If you don’t have the internal resources and want to create a Business Plan for your company, you will see that trying to find help is not easy. I’ve mastered a lot of the best practices and have had a lot of experience in Strategic Planning and Financial Projections. I’m here to support you with this program. The Putting Together YOUR SRATEGY framework is a sub-product of the Strategy4Action framework and, as such, can be customized to your needs. The main difference in the Putting Together YOUR SRATEGY framework is that it is for companies that have a good amount of market information, have a good idea of what they want to do and the general path they should take. Whereas the parent framework – Strategy4Action – takes more of a fresh and blank page approach.
The videos of the program cover all from gathering ideas to creating Financial Projections. You can try to do it yourself. But you will find that you may need help making it happen. For that, please contact me,
Luis Gato
is built upon the best consulting practices by the best consulting firms.
We use Strategy methods from Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter and teachings from other scholars and consultants like Gary Hamel, Bruce Greenwald and others, to tools learned during my MBA and my recent Wharton program on Strategy and Management for Competitive Advantage. Throughout this program you will also see several references to tools created by the top management consulting firms. I also bring my own 25+ years doing Strategic Planning for firms in different industries. You will also see several examples from top global enterprises to some local companies.
Overview:
How much time do you dedicate to Strategy? How structured does that process turn out to be? Do you have enough people to make it happen? With 3 main and indispensable building blocks – Gathering your ideas (and those of the people around you), Building the Strategic Plan, and Financial Projections – this Framework will help you create a Strategic Plan you can share with your stakeholders.
Gato Consulting is here to support you in that process. Whatch an overview of the process in this video:
The 3 main steps:
Step 1- Gathering Ideas
We’ll start by collecting the CEO or business leader’s ideas, but we will build on it and provide some validation and ownership by gathering input and ideas from your managers and great employees.
Since this is a program for organizations that already have a good idea of what they want to do, we’ll keep an open mind, but we still suggest validating a few things that often don’t get questioned, like making sure we analyze Customers’ Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) and Product Improvement/Cost Reduction ideas, Critical Success Factors (CSF) and Differentiation. We have a truly unique way to ascertain this. In the end, we will make sure we have a good compilation of all your ideas organized into a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
We have friendly templates for all our questionnaires and discussions
For this program we will work with a Strategy Team composed of the CEO, Top Leadership, and your other best minds, including up-and-coming managers and Key Process Owners.
At your company, you have access to a spring of ideas and potential energy, and it’s basically free. Let’s tap into them and harness the knowledge of your employees!
Interested in our services?
Want to know more?
Step 2 - Strategizing
Step 2 is composed of three parts…
We will start by Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies’ framework to pick one for your company and then we will define what is the Competitive Advantage(s) you will be building and the Core Competences that should support it, whether you have them or need to enable them.
Then, we will create or fine-tune your Vision, Mission and/or Purpose statements, and what are the Values and/or Behaviors you want to uphold in the company.
And because we have a compilation of Opportunities we will create a draft definition of Long Term Goals that will be fine-tuned when creating Financial Projections.
These elements form what can be called The Big Picture. It’s like a flag that shows the way towards a challenging and exciting goal that has been established and much desired. At the same time, it’s a framework for decision making, clarifying priorities and defining what you do and what you don’t do. Finally, it’s a source of inspiration to everyone in your organization for the foreseeable future.
When did you last take the time to review or consider the elements of “The Big Picture”? How solid was that effort? The Putting Together YOUR STRATEGY Framework brings you the best practices on it and facilitates that work.
As we start Strategizing, and every step along the way, we will be asking for actionable suggestions and for revenue and expense estimates. For instance, if we need to develop a certain Core Competence, we will be identifying what needs to be done to make that happen and how much it might cost.
The 6 Key strategic decisions are called as such because they are the types of decisions that can really move the needle for your company and make the difference from moving slow and steady to growing by leaps and bounds. They involve some analysis though, that’s why they are the last few of our 23 steps looking for Opportunities and you must go through these last exercises to find the largest opportunities.
The Key Strategic Decisions are Product Development (#19), Geographical Expansion (#20), Vertical Integration (#21), Capacity Expansion (#22), and Business Diversification (#23). On top of that we will dive into the 6th decision – Corporate Development – or whether you might be making any of the previous decisions through Organic Growth, Alliances/Joint Ventures, and/or M&A.
Putting Together YOUR STRATEGY uses Blue Ocean Strategies' frameworks to search for valuable innovation in Product Development.
We have established “The Big Picture” which sets the framework for future decision making at your company. We ended the search for Opportunities with the 6 Key Strategic Decision that can really make the difference for your company. The last step in strategizing is to go through your compiled SWOT and prioritize all the actionable suggestions we gathered for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and group them into a handful of main Opportunities and Initiatives.
What do you talk about when you talk about your Strategy? In this video, we will unveil the components of a great Strategic Statement that summarizes your Strategy!
Step 3 - Financials
What’s a Strategic Plan without Financial Projections? or Financial Projections without a careful strategic reflection? We will create monthly, detailed P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements. What is different about Strategy4Action is that we will add Calibration mechanisms to make sure you’re neither too optimistic or pessimistic, creating projections that you can bank on.
When you do your strategy work with a great financial model, you can count on your financials to help you set the pace for action and add value by putting banks and other investors on your side as you establish a track record of credibility behind Financial Projections you consistently meet because they were done with an excellent process.
We will complement the Financial Projections with a company Valuation using a couple of methods and explore “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” – BHAG – that can help motivate everyone in your company.
Another differentiating aspect of Strategy4Action is that it uses calibration tools to reduce Bias and Noise throughout the decision-making process of coming up with your Strategy and putting it in Action.
Now you have a Strategic Plan and Financial Projections for it.
Congratulations!
You are now ready to communicate YOUR STRATEGY!
So, how is
different?
#1 - Building on your ideas with time-tested strategic methodologies.
We’ll use some of the most effective techniques to uncover the best opportunities.
#2 - Several techniques make the best use and engage your company's best minds, not just a couple of people.
These "crowd wisdom" techniques yield more ideas and help improve decisions by reducing noise and bias.
#3 - We use calibrating methods in building Financial Projections – one thing is being ambitious; another is flying to close to the sun.
This will help you build credibility with your stakeholders.
#4 - Consultant working with Your Team, locally, on-site as much as you want, and...
affordably!
