In this article the above strategy model will be used. The first box called History describes the organization’s past. Why do we need to think about the past when we want to design our future? Because we want to extract from that step some ideas to feed our strategy, for example, we will recall our successes, failures and consider what lessons were learned from them. We will go beyond successes and think about activities, circumstances, objects and interactions we liked, loved and were passionate about. What made us positively motivated? Have we experienced being in a zone state? This analysis might rediscover some ideas that we would like to use in our strategy, something that worked really well, but we stopped doing it or we didn’t have resources to do.

The second box Present Situation gives us a clear image of what is happening with our organization now. In order to move towards our desired goal we need to know where we stand. To achieve it we start with an initial research on the organization’s present situation: our products or services compared with our competitors; state of the industry with trends, innovations and market leaders; short description of our current vision, mission, values; and finally the organizational structure with roles and personalities.

This is the key stage where we assess the need for a business turnaround. If this is needed, we switch to the turnaround mode and start doing everything to help the organization to get up from its knees and gain necessary time to heal. We suspend the main strategy process and focus on the emergency.

If the organization is healthy enough we progress with the strategy development and implementation. This is the place and time to use multiple strategy tools. We use PESTLE framework to analyse our external environment and 7S framework to look closely at our internal systems. We use Business Model Canvas to gain a general, holistic and complete overview of the company's workings, customers and revenue streams. We use also: BCG Growth Share Matrix, Porter’s 5 Forces, Top Down Financial Analysis, Stakeholder Analysis, SWOT, Value Proposition Canvas, Value Chain Analysis, Incentive and Penalty Structure Analysis, Impressed and Obsessed Customer and Employee Analysis, 360 Leadership Review, Feng Shui & Lean Audit, Energy Audit, Conscious Leadership Review, Automation Audit, Quality Audit, and Environmental Audit. From the long list of tools we use what we consider necessary when taking into account the complexity of our organization and the present and future situation we are in.

And now there is the next step: Possibilities. We collect, edit and summarise all outputs from the environmental scanning we did in the previous steps. These will be issues to address and ideas on how to address them or other general ideas. We created 3 categories of sources of potential ideas: from present situation analysis, from old strategy and history, and from all staff’s thoughts, preferences, passions and hunches. Ideas derived from the old strategy and history will be treated with special “why questions” to check whether we are happy with what we are doing and whether other options and new ways exist. The free ideas will be induced by wondering whether there is something we are passionate about, something needs to be changed and repaired to make us happy again, or something would be profitable or will bring us real fun and joy. Free ideas generation will be encouraged from all staff on regular basis and proper environmental and psychological conditions will be created to facilitate innovative and insightful thinking. The tools for that can range from extra break to stop and think, a notepad at every work station to write down improvement ideas, inspiring music, coffee meetings between employees that don’t know each other, improvement of surroundings, meditation rooms or retreats away from the company. All strategy ideas will be voted for and commented by staff before we create an organized list of possible ideas to choose from. All comments and ranking will be analysed and included in the final list if necessary.

Next step of the strategy process Vision involves deciding which ideas from the list of possible ideas do we choose to implement or which issues we need or want to address. In the analysis we discuss, prioritise and justify the reasons we’ve chosen certain ideas over others. In the same step we create our vision: a place we would like to be in the future. Our future markets, clients, premises, staff, products or services. The general image of the future state we desire.

Next step Mission involves deciding what we intend to do every day to achieve our vision. What must we do now to get where we want to be. The input to this step is derived from the ideas generated in earlier stages of the strategy process. We also define our higher purpose, i.e. a general goal of the business activities that are beyond our products or services.

Next stage is about Goals and Values. And again we take as an input the ideas from earlier stages of the strategy process and translate them into strategic, tactic and operational goals. Each goal will have one or more objectives to make our intentions more precise and measurable. Values will be defined together with the required behaviours.

So now, we have our vision, mission with higher purpose, strategic goals, objectives and values. All of this constitutes elements of our strategic intent. In the next step of the strategy process we are going to develop our strategy by looking at our strategic intent together with all ideas and issues collected in the process or analysing our past, present and future situation. Now we draw up multiple strategic and tactical initiatives. Some authors call it strategies and tactics. We would rather name it strategic initiatives to decrease the confusion with the company’s general strategy.

Depending on complexity and importance we will have strategic or tactical initiatives. These initiatives will detail the way we would like to act by describing broadly how we are going to achieve one or more component parts of our strategic purpose. Let us imagine we want to accomplish one of the objectives. What type of task or action arrangement does it require? Task arrangement is a collection of items in the field of business change. They might be arranged in the form of projects or action plans. Action arrangement is a collection of items in the field of business as usual: processes and activities.

Another step consists of Pushing and Stopping forces. Lets assume we had drawn up our vision, mission, values and goals. Let us look at gaols and objectives again and see whether any factors exist that are pushing us towards where we want to be. Is it a sense of purpose, the best way of making profit, change of law, increasing competition or you reached a new crisis or turning point? Are there tensions between different possible directions and options? We also consider what is stopping us from getting to where we want to go and what are strategic gaps that in order to achieve our strategy we need to address. Are we learning too slowly, are our people stuck with traditions and habits that no longer work, do people know what to do and how to do it, what people, what skills and resources do you need to make our strategy work?

We might develop an excellent strategy, but without engaging all staff we won’t go very far with that as one of the stopping forces will be resistance to change. We want to sell our strategy. We need to diagnose immunity to change of individuals and groups and then neutralise it. We need to actively plan how to get buy-in, communicate clearly and simply, match goals and motivation, create fulfilling work, match capabilities and motivation, give tools and empowerment for the employees to succeed.

In Next Steps we again take a closer look at the strategic ideas and issues found during the past and present situation scanning and consider which of them could be implemented quickly and affordably to start the momentum of changes. We carefully select some first steps of our core objectives, but also we choose easy and exciting quick fixes to promote buy in and good mood among our people. You may as well want to consult your staff and let them choose what they would prefer.

Now we go to the next stage of our process called Implementation. At this stage we will be designing structures, distributing resources and developing the decision making process. We do everything to make our strategy work. We have instructions and we need to build a working device based on it. Looking at our goals and objectives and values, we will categorise them into high level organizational goals with objectives and functional, team, and individual level objectives. In implementation we will cascade goals from organizational level down the company structure.

We must differentiate between business as usual items like: processes and less complex activities – and – business change items like: projects and simpler action plans (both groups of items are the component parts of the strategic or tactic initiatives). All departments, teams and individuals will have daily, weekly or monthly tasks and activities to do in the form of to-do-lists that will be derived from vision, mission, values, goals with objectives and - going down the planning structure - processes, activities, projects or action plans. Some strategic objectives, tactical objectives, operational objectives, elements of mission or values might be members of multiple items of either change management or business as usual. For example, establishing a new sales channel will need a project to initiate the new way of selling products or services and then a process needs to be run on a regular basis.

It’s important that especially for teams and individuals we assign leading KPIs next to the lagging ones. So, for example, we don’t only measure the lagging output like the sales, but we measure the number of sales calls, number of new contracts signed, etc.

We need to start new habits and get rid of old ones. We can use a tool called Atomic habits created by James Clear to facilitate long term positive changes in people’s behaviours. We also create a system of positive and negative incentives.

And when implementing our values, lets respect their long term importance for the company and try to make the feel of the company in the way it cares and promotes growth and creativity also in personal aspect by introducing time to pause and think during the working day, organizing personal & career development sessions, play games, play music and encourage art.

In next stage of the process we design Measuring performance activities to check whether we are on track with our strategy. For that we can use displayed in company’s public spaces posters or electronic dashboards with the latest performance data, especially financial, relevant to the whole organization or specific teams. We can also use the balanced scorecard with financial, internal business processes, learning and growth, and customer performance results.

The last step Review will allow us to evaluate and improve our strategy process and our strategy. We will analyse performance and lessons learned, take remedial and corrective actions and modify our strategy or the way we develop our strategy. We will ask questions: What is going well? What can we do better next time? Do we need to change our vision or mission? Do we need to change our goals? Do we need to change our values or start living them? How is implementation going and can we improve it?

Creating a strategy takes time and effort, but resulting clarity of purpose will drive our organization to good performance and satisfaction. Before you start planning spend time to develop strategy, use methods and tools to help you with creativity. Organize short coffee breaks to elicit operational and tactical issues and ideas. Organize company retreats in beautiful spots to come up with strategic ideas. Include shop floor employees in generation of ideas and improvement. And remember to facilitate individual time to creatively think of solutions, before and after meeting people in a group setting, because good ideas come with good mood, peace, beauty, silence, temporary isolation and psychological safety.