Your entire strategy on one page – not in 273 PowerPoint slides.

The strategy workflow for SMEs

If you’re a business leader setting out to define a new strategy, you’ll find no shortage of clever models from academia, consultants, or self-proclaimed experts. For many strategy owners, this abundance makes it hard to choose the right path for developing and implementing a coherent, motivating strategy. After months of exhausting strategy work alongside day-to-day operations, enthusiasm and momentum fade – and the outcome often disappoints.

From our experience with strategy leaders in mid-sized companies and corporate units, we know the questions that keep you up at night:

• What strategic framework is right for us? What are its key components?
• How should we approach strategy development and execution methodologically?
• How can we efficiently and effectively manage each step of the process?
• How do we create acceptance for the developed strategy?

These needs of strategy practitioners motivated us to develop a simple, practical tool for the strategy process – from the formulation of a strategy to its implementation. The StrategyFrame® connects and visualizes the essential elements of strategic work in a single overall picture that provides all participants and stakeholders with content-related, procedural, and perhaps even emotional orientation and clarity. Along its three core modules, the central key questions can be answered: What do we need to know? What do we need to decide? And what do we need to do?

This is how the StrategyFrame® provides you with the space for strategic focus and real impact. Step by step, guided by cutting-edge learning technology, you work on your strategy and enter your results directly via our integrated whiteboard functionality. In this way, your StrategyFrame® canvas fills up and becomes the bridge to your future.

The three core modules of the StrategyFrame®

1. Situation analysis

This module focuses on analyzing your company’s position in its current fields of action, identifying potential new areas, and understanding the external environment. The goal is to find answers to the following questions:

• Where is your greatest potential in the "market"?
• Which markets are addressed?
• What are the needs of "customers" and how are they changing?
• Who are the "competitors"?
• What "trends" are changing your industry?
• What happens in the "general environment"?
• What do your "own realities" look like?
• What "challenges" does your company face?

2. Target image

In the second core module, you develop the focus of your corporate strategy across four strategic levels:

EFFECT

With the "impact statement", you define how your company intends to achieve a sustainable impact for the economy, environment and society.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS & SUPERIOR PROFITS

With the differentiating "customer benefit", you make it clear what your company does better or differently than the competition and how it intends to achieve "superior profits" in order to stay one step ahead of the competition.

PLAYING FIELD

At the heart of focusing is defining the playing field for your company. Which "target markets" do you want to operate in? Which "customer segments" do you want to address with which "offers"? Which competitors will you enter the ring with?

PRIORITIES

With the "goals" and "key results", you define what is important for your company and in what order. Objectives and key results can be motivated both quantitatively and qualitatively.

3. Fields of action

Once you have your target image, it is time to realize it.

• What do you need to tackle with your team in the company?
• Which "structures & processes" are necessary?
• How can "data & IT" be used in the best possible way in the digital age?
• Which "people" with which skills does your company need?
• Which "culture" unleashes the power for "innovation"?
• Which strategic "partners" could help you achieve your goals?

If you want your corporate strategy to be effective for different business units, geographies and functional areas, you can define the expected value contribution of the individual units here.

To ensure that your strategy does not remain a mere declaration of intent, draw up a "roadmap" for its implementation and the transformation of your company.

It determines the timing and content of the "steering", the "cascading" of the strategy through the individual business units, geographies and functions and the "dramaturgy" with which you want to act in the various phases.

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