3 core questions of strategy.

Often I find myself engaged in conversations with those running small businesses who believe they have discovered the next  big thing, the idea that will change the world, or at  least their business.

It can be  as simple as a tweak to an existing product that enables it to be used in an adjacent market, to a patented idea that they believe will change the world, the 3 questions I  always ask remain the same:

1. To whom will it add value?
2. How will it add value?
3. By what means can you unlock that value and make a return as a result?

Whilst answering those questions can be time consuming, and sometimes confronting, and is often an evolutionary process, they constitute the core of strategy development,

So often I see a solution in search of a problem posing as strategy that it makes me shake my head in frustration, when a bit of discipline in the way tasks are identified and managed can go such a long way. These are 11 tasks  you can set yourself to help the process of answering the “big three” along.

Related posts:

8 core questions of strategy Strategy as an organic system The strategy cliché, and 5 questions. 6 questions for a new product “reality check”