What is the strategy? Tell you thoroughly in an easy-to-understand way

On the current media platform, almost everyone is talking about strategies: strategic cooperation, strategic investment, strategic layout, strategic exit, strategic entry, platform strategy and ecosystem strategy. ...

Every topic is related to strategy, and it seems that the analysis is in full swing and very penetrating.

However, some key issues have never been solved:

What is the specific strategy?

What's the use of strategy?

–How to plan the strategy?

–How is the strategy implemented?

"Goal" is the most intuitive impression of the public on strategy.

Today, there are still many enterprises that take development goals as their strategies. For example, some companies take "annual income exceeding 654.38+000 billion yuan" as their development strategy, while others take "entering the top 500 in the world" as their strategy.

The goal is an important part of the strategy, but the goal is not the whole strategy. It is not enough for enterprises to have goals, but also to have methods to achieve them. Strategy is not only a milestone at the end, but also a guide for navigation.

"Strategy" should mainly solve three major problems:

What's the goal?

Enterprises must have clear goals, which can be divided into three stages: short-term, medium-term and long-term.

Short-term goals are clear and specific; The mid-term goal points out some key milestones; The long-term goal is more to guide the vague direction.

–How can this be achieved?

To achieve the goal, we need to follow certain methods and steps.

–How long will it take to achieve this goal and what stages will it take?

Enterprises should have short-term, medium-term and long-term planning, and make clear the time nodes of goals in different stages and the sequence of different steps.

Another point that must be emphasized is that strategy is not only aimed at the whole enterprise, but a very broad concept.

From the whole enterprise to a specific department in the enterprise, there are corresponding levels of strategies.

Many senior customers I have served don't believe in strategy, especially some private enterprises with grassroots origins.

Judging from its own successful experience, enterprises have developed well even without strategy.

In fact, this has benefited from the explosive development of China's domestic market in the past 30 years. Most industries have basically maintained an annual growth rate of more than 50%. As long as enterprises can achieve the average development of the industry, they can achieve some undertakings.

However, once such barbaric growth encounters a market slowdown, the disadvantages of lack of strategy begin to appear.

There was once a customer who was a coal boss.

Unlike other coal bosses who are lying down and counting money, this boss has a strategic vision and began to lay out across the industrial chain very early. It also deliberately moved the group headquarters from the coal producing area to the first-tier cities to facilitate operation.

In the past few years, the domestic economy has experienced ups and downs, but this company has been smooth sailing.

This is the most fundamental role of strategy, planning the development direction of enterprises and helping enterprises to establish competitive advantages.

Within the enterprise, the significance of strategy lies in defining the development direction, establishing the unified principle and guiding the enterprise to operate from top to bottom.

In the past consulting experience, I often find that many problems of enterprises can be traced back to the deviation of strategic planning or implementation, which leads to problems in enterprises.

There is a leading white goods company in China. When it entered the kitchen and bathroom field, its business progress was not particularly smooth.

After in-depth understanding, it is found that the root of business problems comes from the vacillation of group strategy.

The home appliance industry relies heavily on channels, but the traditional white electricity channels and kitchen and bathroom appliances channels are completely different, and the sales models are also very different. If we rebuild the channel, we need a lot of manpower and material resources.

The group's strategy has not yet determined whether to invest, so most employees in this department, including R&D, procurement, sales and so on. , are seconded from other departments, many employees even have a lot of work in the original department.

About two or three years later, this business was cut off because of poor management.

In addition, the strategy also provides the foundation and starting point for enterprise management and control.

On the one hand, strategy guides the design of organizational structure (that is, control structure); On the other hand, strategy is the starting point of management indicators and performance appraisal. Without strategy, there is no control.

Many business managers feel that strategy is too empty and mysterious. Apart from the deviation of their own experience, there is another important reason: the lack of systematic understanding of strategy.

A complete strategic system should include the following levels:

Mission/goal/vision Mission/goal/vision

–Corporate strategy

–Business Unit Strategy Business Unit Strategy

–? Functional strategy? Functional strategy

–? Operational strategy? Operation strategy

Strategic system from top to bottom, from top management to front-line employees, employees at each level have corresponding strategies to be responsible for.

1) Mission/goal/vision Mission/goal/vision

Many business managers dismiss the mission/goal/vision (hereinafter referred to as the mission) as just an empty slogan.

Therefore, most domestic enterprises are perfunctory when formulating their missions. The goal of manufacturing enterprises is to build first-class China manufacturing, and the goal of banks is to build world-class banks.

For example, CCB's vision and mission are very bad, lacking pertinence and direction:

Any enterprise should provide good service for customers, create value for shareholders, build a platform for employees and undertake corporate social responsibility. These are the basic requirements of enterprises.

Such a task is better than nothing.

In fact, corporate mission is a highly refined overall strategy of an enterprise. In mature enterprises, mission is also the starting point of strategic planning and implementation.

A good mission should have a detailed "mission statement", clearly explaining the main business, business philosophy and competitive advantages provided by the enterprise.

SF's mission can be regarded as an excellent example: to be the most trustworthy logistics business partner.

"Logistics" is the main business of SF; "Business partner" is the concept of SF; "Trustworthy" is the advantage of SF.

SF also has a detailed mission statement (see SF official website for details):

SF provides you with fast, safe, efficient and reliable logistics services;

SF not only provides customized one-stop solutions for customers in different industries, but also becomes a service provider of ecological management for customers in industries.

SF regards customers' problems as its own, helping enterprises to focus more on their own advantages and make personal life more convenient.

On the one hand, a clear mission statement helps customers quickly understand the enterprise and establish a sense of identity; More importantly, it can ensure a unified understanding of the enterprise within the enterprise and help employees better understand and implement the company strategy.

2) Company strategy

Most mission statements are highly abstract, because mission statements are intended to motivate rather than constrain enterprises. They give directions, images, tone and ideas to guide enterprises, rather than expressing concrete results.

Enterprise strategy is the most direct embodiment of enterprise mission. The mission is often a vision, and the enterprise strategy plans out the intermediate process that must be passed to realize this vision.

Company strategy mainly includes two themes:

One is strategic goals, including short-term (1-3 years) goals and medium-and long-term (3-5 years and above) goals;

The other is the strategy to achieve the goal. Common strategies mainly include:

Integration (industry integration), diversification, market penetration, entering new markets, new business/product development, mergers and acquisitions, contraction and divestiture, management and control mode, etc.

Participants in corporate strategy formulation are mainly the top management of the company, generally including the board of directors (responsible for decision-making), CXO (responsible for formulation and decision-making) and VP (participating in formulation) of various business departments.

Many customers' understanding of strategy only stays at the company or group level, taking pure strategic objectives as the whole strategy. So we will think that the strategy is "space", "no landing" and "useless".

3) Business unit strategy

The next level of a company is a business unit (BU). In the organizational structure of some domestic companies, BU is generally called business department.

Every BU is the main force to generate income, so its strategy is particularly important within the company and closely related to the company's strategy.

In many cases, the strategic planning of the division is synchronized with the strategic planning of the company and becomes a part of the strategic planning of the company.

Even in some companies, the overall strategy of the group is a combination of the strategies of various business units (of course, there must be reorganization and balance at the group level).

Similar to the corporate strategy, each division strategy also needs to answer two questions: strategic objectives and means.

BU-level strategies generally include: integration (industry integration), market penetration, entering new markets, new business/product development, mergers and acquisitions, contraction and divestiture.

4) Function strategy

Functions mainly refer to some basic abilities of enterprises.

Typical backstage functions, such as human resources, finance, IT; Intermediate platforms generally include production, R&D and supply chain; Marketing and sales are generally front-office departments.

The organizational structure of different enterprises is different, and there are great differences:

Many large companies will incorporate HR, finance, IT and other functions into their headquarters, all BU * * * *, and all BUs. However, in BU, only the functions of R&D, sales and so on are kept.

But some enterprises have strong BUs, and each BU has complete functional departments (such as HR, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. ).

No matter what kind of organizational structure, functional strategy can not exist alone, but it inherits BU and corporate strategy, and functional strategy is the decomposition of corporate strategy and business division strategy.

The goal of functional strategy is to realize the company/business unit strategy.

Take the marketing function as an example.

The marketing strategy adopted by enterprises can not be separated from the product strategy at the company level. The marketing department must understand the positioning, functions and target customers of the products before making targeted marketing plans.

In addition, the function strategy itself has a complete system, and different functions are directly different. Only by clarifying the details of these functions can we better decompose and undertake the strategy from the level of the company and the business department.

Take the human resources function as an example.

The strategies of human resources generally include: human resources planning, recruitment management strategy, training management strategy, performance management strategy, salary incentive strategy, etc.

These strategies are closely integrated with the company and business departments.

Assuming that the company has entered a new business field, HR needs to consider the organizational structure and preparation, make a recruitment plan, design the salary structure and performance management methods that match the new business, and so on.

Only by clarifying the relationship between each detail and business can the function cooperate with the realization of new business strategy.

5) Operation strategy

Operation strategy is a series of strategies adopted by various business departments and functional departments in practical work.

Compared with other strategies mentioned above, the operation strategy pays more attention to the actual operation level, so it is more down-to-earth, with more details and no fixed form.

At the same time, the operation strategy is often the most easily overlooked part of the enterprise strategic system, and it also often becomes the weakest part.

The operation strategy is generally formulated by the middle and high level of each department. Although it contains many details, it is still too simplified compared with the complexity of actual work.

These strategies are often distorted when they are passed from middle-level leaders to grassroots leaders, and will be further distorted when grassroots leaders pass them on to frontline members.

Successful operation strategy can not be separated from long-term exploration and training.

The common misunderstanding of operation strategy is that it is regarded as business strategy (company strategy or division strategy), which leads enterprises to lose their advantages in the competition.

A large number of domestic enterprises regard operation strategy as enterprise strategy.

Typically, many managers have a very wrong cognition, that is, they regard "price advantage" as the only competitive advantage and "cost reduction" as the company strategy.

Although reducing costs can win customers in the short term, in the long run, the company can't shape differentiation and cause serious homogenization, which is not only harmful to the company itself, but also harmful to the industry as a whole.

Many articles have mentioned that in the era of rapid development of the Internet, the past set of strategies has become outdated; Many new concepts are put forward, such as platform/ecosystem strategy, decentralization strategy, O2O strategy and so on.

Indeed, some methods and tools used in traditional strategies have gradually become unsuitable for the ever-changing environment.

However, no matter how the times develop, the essence of enterprises is still to manage employees, serve customers and create value. Therefore, the basic principles of enterprise strategic planning and landing will not change.

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