10 Principles of Strategy

I recently attended a course, “Designing Your Business Strategy” run by the Gordon Institute of Business Science (a South African university), presented by Tony Manning a well known South African Strategist. I found the course really useful, Tony’s approach to strategy practical, focused on execution and simplicity. An article on his website, (which is worth a visit as it’s packed with articles on strategy) that sums up Tony’s approach, Tony Manning’s 10 Principles of Strategy are:

1. If you don’t make a difference, you don’t matter.
2. You can’t make a difference to everyone.
3. Strategy must enable your organization to make a difference that matters to a critical mass of the “right” customers.
4. Strategy connects the purpose and values of your organization with those of its customers and other external stakeholders.
5. It may be easy to clone a product, but it’s impossible to clone a community. So a vital goal of strategy is to create and sustain a unique community.
6. Purpose and values hold a community together, drive teams to seek their potential, and provide the context in which individuals will volunteer their imagination and spirit.
7. Shared ideas lead to shared meaning. The more openly and honestly ideas are shared, the greater the level of trust will be, the more efforts will be aligned – and the more ideas will emerge.
8. People value work that makes them feel valued. When they make strategy, they matter. And they own the results, so effective execution is more likely.
9. Strategic management is conversation. It informs, focuses attention and effort, triggers fresh insights, lights up the imagination, energizes people, and inspires performance.
10. Strategic conversation provides a context for personal and group learning. Your message must be compelling, simple, clear, and believable, or you won’t sell it. It must also be complex and challenging, or no one will buy it. And it must be repeated with relentless consistency.

Apart from teaching he has published a few great books on his unique approach to strategy, I’ve listed below one of Tony’s books on strategy for those who may be interested:

Technorati Tags: Strategy, Principles, Leadership, Business, Management, Execution

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Tagged as: Strategy