Toolkit
A strategy toolkit
Five tools, used in order, take a team from what is changing in the world to a plan with dates on it. Each one answers a single question, and each one feeds the next.
Every step has a full guide on this site, with figures you can click, quizzes and worksheets. Send the page to a team before a planning day, or work through it for one of your key customers.
Step 1 · The outside world
What is changing in the world around us?
You come out with: The big political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental changes: candidate opportunities and threats.
Step 2 · The industry
Porter's Five Forces
Who takes the value our industry creates?
You come out with: The forces squeezing profit, which ones matter most, and which way they are moving.
Step 3 · Inside the business
Value chain analysis
What are we really better or worse at than our competitors?
You come out with: Three strengths and three weaknesses, as customers see them.
Step 4 · The strategies
The 9-box SWOT
So what should we do about it?
You come out with: Strategies, each built on a strength or weakness and an opportunity or threat, and tested against the objectives.
Step 5 · The plan
What will we do, and by when?
You come out with: Three goals: for three years, twelve months and six weeks.
Alongside
Running the day
For key accounts
Every tool here works just as well on a customer's business as on your own. Run the five steps for a key customer and you will know what is changing around them, what is squeezing them, what they are good and bad at, and what they are likely to do next. Then you can ask which of their strategies you can help with. Each guide has a section on how.