By: KHA Consulting Team
The following is part 12 of a multi-part series on The KHA Way, KHA Management Consulting’s Integrated Service Offering. This blog series includes the benefits of using KHA Management Consulting Services and the components included.
In the November 8, 2017 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Freek Vermeulen defined an organization’s strategy as a plan that ‘involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do.’ Easy enough, right? Wrong! Many organizations fail to grasp all that this definition implies.
- It implies that what organizations will not do is equally as important as what it will do.
- This definition also emphasizes that there is more than one choice that must be made.
There are multiple choices. Knowing these two things, one may question, ‘Where does strategy really begin? And, where does it end?’.
Our Management Consulting arm of KHA Accountants, PLLC has helped numerous clients maneuver these exact questions. When asked the question of where strategy really begins and where it ends, we say, it begins with the clearest picture of where you ultimately want to be as a firm, and it ends with your actions; what you do each day. Counterintuitive, right? Each day you start with the end of your strategic plan. Absolutely.
Let us break it down further. Our strategic planning framework consists of three major phases.
Phase 1 – The beginning, is an organization’s long-term blueprint.
Phase 2 – An organization’s offering alignment.
Phase 3 – The end, is the organization’s short-term tactics.
In uncovering an organization’s true strategy, there is an order in which strategic thinking progresses. No portion of the strategic thinking progress is more important than the other, but if done out of order, it will not be nearly as effective. A long-term blueprint is pointless without Short-Term Tactics and Short-Term Tactics may as well not exist if not for the Offering Alignment.
The three phases of strategic planning mesh together perfectly to form an organization’s strategy. Therefore, the beginning is really your end goal and the end of strategic planning is your beginning, where you truly begin to take the reins of your organization and take it to the next level of operational excellence.
In the next four sections of this blog series, we will introduce you to each of the phases of strategic planning, and hopefully, encourage you to embark on uncovering your organization’s strategy on your own.
In our next installment, we will discuss Phase 1, the long-term blueprint, in detail and break it down into manageable portions that you can start to put to work in your organization today.
At KHA Management Consultants, we work with mid-market industry leaders to identify what makes the organization, its stakeholders, and its’ employees tick. We facilitate Process Alignment with your organization’s key constituents to ensure buy-in, ownership, and a new way of thinking about the organization and its stakeholders amongst all levels. From a resource perspective, we primarily use our unmatched experience but also tap into the top-level resources such as those made available by Harvard Business Review, relevant strategic management authors, and MentorPlus. Some of those materials, frameworks, and lessons have been used in authoring this series.
KHA Management Consultants, the consulting department of KHA Accountants, PLLC, based in Flower Mound, Texas, is always looking for opportunities to work with key clients ready to take their organization to the next level. If you have a desire to improve, take the first step toward success with the strategic management experts, and contact us at 972-221-2500.