Strategy simplifed – 3 questions (Courtesy: Don Schmincke)

I had the privilege of attending a TEC talk by Don Schmincke (author of The Code of the Executive) a few days ago. The talk was phenomenal and had a ton of “take home value.”

One of the key things that I remember very well was the answer to the
question – how do we create a strategy for our organization?

With the
risk of over-simplifying, let me summarize what Don said.

Strategy can be evolved by answering the following three questions for
one of our products or services or for the whole organization:

1. Where is the battlefield?

defining the markets and deciding what we do and what we don’t do?

2. Who is our enemy?

deciding who we are competing against. sometimes it may not be another company but just the status quo.

3. How do we win?

where do we bring the innovation to make “us” the choice and not them.
Or what do we bring to the table that will force someone to “pay” and
“change” the way they work (because they will be using our product(s)
or service(s))

Simple and succint, I thought.