Strategy review: testing positioning and implementation

Many companies have a well-established strategy process. Therein lies a risk. If strategy work becomes routine, there is a danger of constant self-confirmation. In dynamic markets, this can lead to a serious corporate crisis in the long run.

This is where the strategy review comes in. It looks at strategic positioning in light of current market requirements and at the same time asks about the degree of strategy implementation. An outside view helps to overcome the inward and backward-looking orientation that easily develops in well-established procedures.

Three areas of the review concern the company’s relationship with its environment. The first is the assessment of market developments and core competencies. Current trends in the socio-technical environment and the development of the markets are assessed and compared with the company’s own core competencies.

The second area creates clarity about the expectations of customers and other stakeholders. The expectations of the various groups are set side by side and compared with the degree to which the current offerings meet them. The third area is the review of strategic options. The positioning is examined with regard to economic objectives and to ecological and social aspects.

The other three areas focus on the organisation. The first concerns the degree of strategy implementation. The review examines how firmly the vision of the future and the strategic market positioning are anchored in the organisation.

Next, the impact of the strategic initiatives is evaluated. The degree of implementation and the impact achieved are considered from the perspectives of the strategy map: purpose, planet, people and profit. The sixth area is the strategy routines themselves. The review examines how the organisation usually conducts its strategy work and whether these routines allow it to look outward and ahead.

The review works along fourteen key questions. The first concern the observation of the environment. Which topics occupy the company in its markets and need to be observed? How does it deal with observed trends, including external ecological and socio-economic factors? Which market segments can be defined, and which are particularly attractive in terms of growth, profitability and volume?

These are followed by questions on core competencies: which ones the company can base its strategic considerations on and which it needs to develop for the future. From this, the key strategic questions emerge that the company must answer. A separate question addresses the opportunities and risks arising from legal requirements for climate neutrality and from the growing sensitivity of customers and end consumers to sustainable business practices.

Two questions focus on customers. To what extent does the company currently meet the benefit expectations of customers and other stakeholders from their point of view? And which customer segments can be distinguished by behaviour and needs?

The second part of the key questions leads from analysis to decision. First, the fundamental options for strategic positioning are clarified. This is followed by the question of how the company wants to position itself for a successful future and what an attractive and viable vision of the future looks like. The target markets and target customer segments follow from the vision of the future.

The next questions concern the consequences for the offering and the organisation. How must the offerings be designed so that they meet the expectations of the relevant customer segments and use value creation potential? How must internal processes, structures and resources be developed further in order to use market potential and meet market requirements?

Two questions complete the catalogue. One concerns early detection: how can it be assessed in good time whether the implementation of the strategic measures is leading to the vision of the future or whether adjustments are needed? The other concerns the organisational structure and the forms of collaboration required for the strategic goals.

The review begins by recording the initial situation. The current organisation is considered in light of the requirements of the market and stakeholders. In the second step, the challenges and the target picture are made concrete. The third step examines the strategic positioning from the perspectives of the strategy map.

In the fourth step, suitable interventions and measures for achieving the goals are specified. The fifth step develops criteria against which the process can be continuously reflected on and adjusted. The sixth step sets up accompanying impact monitoring that safeguards strategy implementation.

The framework used is a strategy map based on the Balanced Scorecard as updated by Kaplan and McMillan (2020). At its centre is the purpose, with the questions of why, how and what the company does and how it sees itself. Alongside it are ecological positioning (planet) and socio-economic positioning (people). Above these lies long-term economic success (profit), with the objectives of profitability and growth.

The map arranges these contents into several perspectives. The stakeholder perspective contains the value proposition to target customers, markets and external stakeholders, described in terms of time, quality, price, service, relationship and brand. The environmental perspective captures the conditions at the interface between organisation and environment. The process perspective covers service delivery, customer management, innovation, and legally required and social processes. People, technologies, organisation and culture are the prerequisites.

transformis works in the third mode of consulting. Alongside the factual dimension, that is, the substantive task, the social dimension and the time dimension are given equal consideration from the outset. The social dimension concerns the quality of cooperation and the decision-making capacity of the team. The time dimension concerns balancing acceleration and deceleration in the decision-making process so that there is neither oversteering nor understeering.

The starting points are the organisation’s established observation and evaluation frameworks and its communication routines, through which information is generated and condensed into decisions. The fact that the consultancy is not tied to any industry is intended to prevent the blind spots of focused industry experts from entering the review, and to bring in experience from other industries.

Fixed rules apply to the collaboration. All working sessions are facilitated and all results documented. Each session ends with minutes that everyone present accepts. Each session is reflected on and evaluated, and the evaluation feeds into the preparation of the next.