Turning  Threats into Strategic Opportunities:

Most small businesses conduct strategy in their businesses, but they are just not consciously organized and deliberate in planning what class of strategic actions they end up engaged in – is your strategic focus on Managerial leadership? Knowledge capital? Resources? Operational fit? Business environment or industry? In most small businesses strategic decisions and actions are usually the process of crisis management. If you understand that strategy is the ability to for the business to manage opportunities and threats in the environment. But sometimes the wisdom is in the ability to turn your threats into opportunities. Give yourself time to reevaluate what’s going on inside and outside of your business environment. Small businesses are agile, quick to adapt and respond to threats at less cost and seized opportunities in the environment.

Elements of Strategic Success:
In closing I share with you that for your strategy to succeed there are other elements that need to be in place, and they play a significant role in whether your strategy results are great or average.

1. Leadership – be present in your business
2. Know your company’s DNA
3. Know your business environments
4. Know your customers
5. Have a strategic consciousness
6. Act deliberately and boldly.

Leadership – be present in your business. Sometimes running a small business can be exhausting and overwhelming, and its always great to delegate. However, one function you can not delegate in your business is decision making. As the owner of the business, you need to be present at all times even when you have employees doing some of the functional tasks in the business. Provide direction, guidance, oversight but you have to make the decisions necessary to drive your business. It’s difficult to transition from chief operating office to chief executive officer as your business grows but your business tells you when you are ready to make these transitions

Know your company’s DNA - Knowing your business model is critical to business success. Many business owners fails to realize that as the business grows, the business model shifts or sometime completely changes. It is imperative to reassess and redefine your business model in order to meet the growing pains and challenges of scaling the business. This takes knowing that this business’s revenue formula is equivalent to your business DNA! Your business model is how you create consistent value and meet customer/needs regardless of how big your business grows!

Know your business environments – Your business environment is always changing and you as the business over have no control over it. However, you can always reasonably anticipate change if you are constantly scanning the environment, planning, tracking trends, regularly informing yourself about what’s happening in your industry or marketplace, networking and attending conference. Building your knowledge base is important for you as a business owner to manage change in the environment.

Know your customers – Customers are everything, and they are also the best informants to tell you whether your product or service is what they need. Creating interactive systems for customer engagement, feedback of monitoring customer behavior is some of the strategies you can implement to know your customers and your prospects.

Have a strategic consciousness – Strategic behavior is crucial to strategy management in a small business. It’s always starts with the question Why? Follow by How? If you can always ask these questions when analyzing what you are currently doing in your business or what you plan to do in the future, you are already being strategic. Make it a habit. Don’t just jump to implement ideas without first processing the reason for doing it and understanding your capacity and capabilities to do it successfully. In addition, define what success looks like because if you do not have a vision of your return on investment you can not measure the success of your strategic endeavors.

Act deliberately and boldly. – Have an action plan and implement it. Most small businesses will create the plan and shelf it! You might as well have never bothered to put the plan on paper, You action plan whether it’s a business plan; strategic plan; growth plan is a living document! It changes with the reality of execution. This is the test or proof of your concept. You can only learn the feasibility of your plan from experience, therefore, just be bold and do it. Business is a contact sport© . All the bruises and cuts you get are a testimony of the lessons learned as an entrepreneur. Thefore act deliberately and boldly to ensure business success.

Republished May 2023; Copyright @ February 2011 Dr. Tendai D. Ndoro (DocNdoro) – CEO, EDCTrainers, LLC dba /SLIPPA; https://www.linkedin.com/in/docndoro/