Strategic preparation sets the foundation for clarity, confidence and growth.
In the life of a growing business, the strategy roadmap is a critical tool to navigate the way towards the company’s vision. For many CEOs of mid-sized businesses, strategic planning can often be set aside in favour of the ever-consuming operational day-to-day.
Only 7% of businesses in Australia surpass $2 million in revenue*. Clear strategic direction is essential if you want to join this group.
The key in shifting from uncertainty to confidence is in preparing the right way before you start building your next strategic roadmap.
The following steps will take you through the strategic preparation process that transforms uncertainty into clarity, so you can lead with confidence and make informed decisions.
Step 1: Look Inside Before You Look Ahead
Many Founder CEOs and their teams start planning with a whiteboard and ambitious goals. But better strategy begins with an honest analysis of your business as it stands today.
Know Your Clients
Your client base is the best indicator of what’s working and what isn’t. Which clients are high-value, long-term, and aligned with your ideal market? Which ones drain your resources or don’t fit your future direction?
Segmentation is essential to understanding the lifetime value of your best clients and where your best potential opportunities for growth lie.
Understanding this mix allows you to attract more of the right clients, fine-tune your marketing, and increase client value.
Audit Your Products and Services
Not all revenue is created equal. Some offerings deliver high margin with low effort; others generate complexity and cost.
Be honest when you consider growth potential, and balance it with actual sales and margin performance. Could you replace any of your services with more valuable and in-demand alternatives?
Consider which products or services are ‘stars’ worth scaling, and which should be culled or reworked. It is important that you and your team focus on the data to remain objective.
Analyse Financial Performance
You don’t need to be an accountant to use your numbers strategically. But you do need to understand financial performance in a way that supports decision-making.
Some important areas to focus on are:
- Where is revenue growth coming from?
- Are margins being maintained or eroded as we grow?
- Where are we most profitable and can we grow more of that?
The biggest red flag for mid-sized businesses is growing revenue but declining profit. It’s a signal that strategy isn’t aligned with structure or pricing, or that the company is not operating as efficiently as it could be. Once you see the trends clearly, you can make informed decisions about capacity, investment, and pricing strategies.
Conduct an Objective SWOT
A superficial SWOT is pointless, and doing this exercise is often neglected completely. It really is essential to dig deeply into your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats with complete honesty.
It will not benefit you in any way if you are subjective in this exercise. You almost need to take the approach of an outsider looking into your own company. This will provide insights as to where you can grow, what needs shoring up, and where external forces (like technology or regulation) may threaten your plans.
Step 2: Scan the Outside World for Fresh Thinking
Good strategy requires both internal clarity and external awareness. This is where research becomes your competitive edge.
By taking a broader and more global view of ideas and examples, you could uncover innovative initiatives to escalate growth.
Track the Disruptors
AI, automation, digital platforms, climate shifts, supply chain changes – what macro or industry trends could disrupt your business model, or create new opportunities?
The key is to look at disruption through the lens of opportunity, and potential advantage for your own business.
Benchmark Across Borders
One of the most underused sources of inspiration is similar companies in other countries. What are the market leaders doing differently in the US, UK, or Asia?
I’ve had Australian clients radically improve strategic advantage by aligning with offshore partners, adopting technology used overseas, or adapting new delivery models they hadn’t previously considered.
Borrow From Other Industries
This requires an open mind and a desire to learn and innovate. How are companies in entirely different sectors innovating in customer experience, packaging, pricing, or digital delivery? These ideas can often be applied in fresh ways to your own business.
Step 3: Ask Your Clients & Listen Carefully
Client feedback is not just a tactic to improve service levels and client engagement. It is also a strategic tool that can provide valuable insights to help guide your strategic focus for growth.
In my experience, the most effective way to do this is with a selection of well-structured interviews to discover, for example:
- Where your value is greatest from the client perspective
- Client growth plans which could positively impact your own growth
- What unmet needs you could solve next
When your client answers each question with a score out of 10, simply ask what would need to happen for your company to receive a ‘10’. The insights from this exercise can be pure gold.
Step 4: Assess Risk to Make Smart Calls
Every strategy carries risk. That’s not a bad thing, but failing to assess it and ignoring it is.
Use a simple framework:
- Low Risk, High Return = pursue confidently
- High Risk, High Return = assess carefully
- Low Risk, Low Return = low priority
- High Risk, Low Return = avoid
Richard Branson always asks: What’s the downside? How would we respond and defend?
Consider whether you can test an opportunity before fully committing and investing. Strategic decisions made with risk visibility are decisions that can be made with more confidence.
Step 5: Use a Decision-Making Framework™
If you have too many opportunities, or aren’t sure which path to follow, use a framework to assess each option against criteria such as:
- Fit with business model
- Resource and capital requirements
- ROI potential
- Risk level
- Strategic alignment with your purpose and goals
This tool (which is integral to how I help companies in the strategy process) brings structure and a filter to strategic choices – especially when you’re overwhelmed with opportunities, or lack confidence in which direction will be best for the company.
Step 6: Establish Your Strategic Foundations
Before you finalise any roadmap, articulate your strategic foundations clearly. These include:
- Purpose: Why does your business exist?
- Vision: What is the big picture you are moving towards?
- Values: What behaviours drive your culture and decisions?
- Business Model: What is your primary way of delivery to your primary market?
- Ideal Clients: Who are the best clients aligned with your company’s purpose?
- Client Outcomes: What transformation do you deliver?
These are the foundations on which your company’s growth is built. They help keep everyone focused on the bigger picture and what is important.
Step 7: Build a Strategy Roadmap That is Clear and Actionable
Once the preparation work has been completed, you will be ready to design your Strategy Roadmap. This is a one-page map for the next 12-18 months of focus. It should include:
- Business Situation & Opportunities – summarise your insights from internal and external analysis
- Strategic Goals & Priorities – define your direction and big goals
- Key Focus Areas – identify your company’s key functional areas that will deliver on those goals
- Actions & Accountabilities – detail who does what, by when, with what success measures (these detailed actions sit behind the one-page roadmap)
- Review Cadence – set quarterly reviews and annual resets to track progress and make adjustments as needed
The Role of the CEO Is to Make Strategy Work
Ultimately, CEOs must drive and own the company’s strategy.
Before you ask your team to deliver more, or invest in new systems, or target new markets, do the foundational work. Take stock. Look at your numbers, your people, your products, your customers. Then make decisions rooted in clarity.
By following these steps, it will move you from uncertainty to clarity and confidence. In turn, that will help you join the 7% of businesses that truly scale.
*Source: Australian Small Business & Family Enterprise Ombudsman
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