Most companies communicate strategy as a set of aspirations and platitudes. But aspirations aren’t strategy, and that mode of communication leaves employees in the dark. Strategy is a set of hard-to-reverse choices and explaining what these choices are and why they were made is what strategy communication should be.

Strategy Vs Big, Hairy Goals

One recent academic study reported that even in high-performing companies with clearly articulated strategies, <a href="https://hbr.org/2013/06/when-ceos-talk-strategy-is-anyone-listening">only 29% of their employees knew what their company’s strategy was</a>. In another 2019 survey, only 35% of the employees claimed to know their company’s strategy and fewer than 20% said that they understood why they were following the strategy that had been communicated to them.

Disconnect With Strategy

Companies must first make the difficult choices that strategy requires and then <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/02/the-art-of-crafting-a-15-word-strategy-statement">communicate these choices to employees in an effective way</a>. Unfortunately, if we go by what companies communicate in their annual reports or by what CEOs say at company conferences, the bulk of the communication is focused on the organization’s goals and aspirations rather than its choices. This mode of communication leaves employees in the dark and limits their emotional connection to their organization. Improving our communication of strategy can lead to major benefits in how employees execute our strategy.

Strategy Is Not Aspirations, Objectives or Wishful Thinking

Most companies communicate strategy as a set of aspirations and platitudes. But aspirations aren’t strategy, and that mode of communication leaves employees in the dark. Strategy is a set of hard-to-reverse choices and explaining what these choices are and why they were made is what strategy communication should be.

Stashed ideas

Don’t Confuse Strategy with Lofty Goals

Productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive.Productivity is not about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting the right things done. The right things are those actions that move you or your company closer to the goal.

The Premise

In business, you have three primary levers – net profit, return on investment, and cash flow. You want all three levers to move in the right direction. A common mistake is optimizing for one of these metrics, which may inadvertently make one or both of the other metrics go in the wrong direction. It’s important to view your business as a system, and the system improves when you move the three metrics the right way.

The Goal of A Business

In a warehouse setting, throughput, inventory, and operating expenses are proxy metrics that represent net profit, return on investment, and cash flow, the three levers of a business.Throughput: the rate at which the system generates money through sales.Inventory: Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell.Operating expense: Operational expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput.The goal is thus to increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense

Throughput, Inventory, and Operating Expense

At its core, manufacturing is a series of dependent events. Ensuring the right interaction between these dependent events is essential for the success of the manufacturing business.To improve in manufacturing, you must optimize for the entire system, not just a local area. The reality is that some resources have more capacity than others, and this needs to be considered when creating efficiencies in the system.

A Plan Is a System of Dependent Events

Bottleneck: a resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed upon it. Non-bottleneck: a resource whose capacity is greater than the demand placed on it.Because bottlenecks are the constraint in the system, if you waste any time on a bottleneck resource, your entire system loses time. The capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of the bottleneck. If you lose an hour on a bottleneck, you lose an hour in the entire plant.

Bottlenecks and Non-Bottlenecks

Utilizing a resource means using a resource in a way that moves the system toward its goal. Utilizing a resource is a productive action.Activating resources means using a resource, whether or not there is benefit from the work its doing. This explains why activating a non-bottleneck resource is often inefficient – it does not move the system closer toward its goal.

Activating vs. Utilizing a Resource

<ul><li>Identify the system’s constraint.</li><li>Decide how to exploit the system’s constraint.</li><li>Subordinate everything else to the above decision.</li><li>Elevate the system’s constraint.</li><li>If in the previous steps a constraint has been broken, go back to step 1, but do not allow inertia to cause a system’s constraint.</li></ul>

The Five Step Process

A manager has the ability to answer three simple questions:<ul><li>What needs to be changed?</li><li>What does it need to be changed to?</li><li>How do you cause the change?</li></ul>

The Role Of A Manager

Although the 5-step process above can work in any organization, the exact details and application must be tailored to the specific circumstances and challenges in your organization.The constraints that you face may not always be physical. There could also be intangible constraints, such as attitudes and deeply-entrenched practices from long-standing policies and procedures

Applying The Process of Ongoing Improvement

The Goal

Content operations is the combined foundation of people, process, and technology that allows an organization to effectively and efficiently maintain its content lifecycle from start to finish. This framework spans the strategy, creation, publishing, distribution, and management of content.Content operations focus on three elements:<ul><li>People: who is performing a task and what their roles and responsibilities are.</li><li>Process: what functions are needed to complete a project successfully.</li><li>Technology: what tools help build out a content operations system.</li></ul>

Content Operations

In content and content operations, the people are the foundation. While customers sit at the center of content, the operations aspect focuses on the company and its team. Roles and responsibilities should be well-defined and outlined to keep the system running smoothly.As long as the roles and responsibilities are clear, the team and its operations should function successfully.

People

Your team — and their roles and responsibilities — will help determine workflows to keep your content moving from planning to publishing.Style guidelines, templates, and content governance models strengthen processes and promote accountability and consistency. These frameworks help keep content on track, but they need to be used with technology to ensure content operations are running smoothly.

Process

Because the planning and execution of content are so extensive, teams require multiple resources to be successful.The technology for content operations can fall into categories such as:<ul><li>Project Management & Scheduling</li><li>Task Management</li><li>Content Execution</li><li>Analytics & Reports.</li></ul>

Technology

Content operations lead to results, and they result in:<ul><li>Saving time and money. When a content operations team establishes a sound cycle between people, processes, and technology, it leads to efficiency.</li><li>Content operations promote better quality content.</li><li>Producing content faster. When faced with an immovable deadline, content operations keep teams on schedule.</li><li>Happy and confident teams. When team members are unhappy or confused about their roles, responsibilities, or resources, their work may reflect it.</li></ul>

Why content operations matter

In content operations, remember these three words: people, process, and technology. Find out why each pillar matters to your content operations.

What Is Content Operations? A Straight-Forward Guide

Our memory fades with time. So we won't always remember how things went down. We best remember emotional experiences, such as important ideas you generated, but you will not remember all the details. You are also likely to forget things other people generated. This is why people invented contracts. Contracts help us recall the exact wording of an agreement and help resolve conflicts. People also tend to forget details of any important decisions. The solution is simple: document everything.

Time Corrupts Memory

Many ideas people generate are a waste of time. This is because it seemed like a good idea but are not being checked upon. Instead, they keep going because of the initial momentum. Larger companies can accommodate wasteful overheads, but startups won't be able to. If the organisation has capacity and resources, they often just hire more people instead of trimming the things that become irrelevant. That's why it's good to do a periodic irrelevance audit.

Collected Baggage Grows Heavier

What They Don’t Teach You in Business School 

Poor mental health can impact individuals, employers, and societies. Mental health conditions can cause individuals to miss ten to 12 workdays per year and suffer 14 to 18 days of reduced productivity. Many companies think taking action on workplace mental health means setting up programmes that are owned by human resources (HR). However, this approach is insufficient to create real, sustainable change. Five core principles can help leaders create a more mentally healthy workplace.

The impact of poor mental health

Core risk factors include high levels of role stress or a lack of support or flexibility. For example:<ul><li>Community building. Bringing together people across roles and levels to help build organisational cohesion.</li><li>Enhanced flexibility. Ensuring flexible work hours for parents, such as additional paid and unpaid time off, reduced hours, changed work patterns.</li><li>Workload monitoring and dynamic rebalancing. It can be informal or low-tech, such as team stand-ups with work for the day or system monitoring to spot activity spikes.</li></ul>

Design workplaces to minimise harm

Effective programmes focus on psychological safety and broad-based mental health awareness. For example:<ul><li>Mental health promotion. Leaders publically share their commitment to supporting and improving mental health through storytelling.</li><li>Supported boundary setting. </li><li>Leader capability. Providing access to mental health training.</li></ul>

Building organisational resilience

Employers provide stress-management programmes built around cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). It aims to change misconceptions and assumptions and teach new skills for handling stressful situations. For example:<ul><li>Resilience training. Companies distribute workbooks containing a series of resilience challenges.</li><li>Mindfulness programmes.</li><li>Physical activity. Organisations use virtual physical challenges for individuals and groups.</li></ul>

Building individual resilience

Organisations create a strong awareness of the signs of mental ill-health, appropriate services, and a culture that encourages asking for help. For example:<ul><li>Tailored mental health awareness. Creating multichannel communications that focus on the experiences of working parents and advice and details on support resources.</li><li>Mental health-focused events. Organisations share stories, build awareness and reduce stigma.</li><li>Expanded employee assistance programmes (EAPs). Organisations expand access to preexisting programmes that include family members of employees, or small-business suppliers or customers.</li></ul>

Facilitating early help-seeking

Organisations may expect employees with mental health issues to make a full recovery before returning to work. This approach is often misguided as returning to work is often important to the recovery process. Changes to the workplace may be necessary. <ul><li>Direct access to psychological support. </li><li>Increased leave. Employers can offer five days of additional "pandemic leave" on a no-questions-asked basis.</li></ul>

Supporting recovery and return to work

<ul><li>Understand the factors that contribute to mental health conditions, such as a low level of support provided in completing work, an imbalance between effort and reward, and a low level of autonomy.</li><li>Holistically consider the entire operating model and cultural system. Consider the people, process, structure and culture.</li><li>Use data to personalise interventions. People experience the workplace differently. Each one will face different stressors and challenges.</li><li>Co-design solutions with your employees. </li><li>Solve with your community. Look beyond the workplace and engage with your communities.</li></ul>

Principles to sustainably improve workplace mental health

Out of the shadows: Sustainably improving workplace mental health

Your customers and friends likely are generating content, tagging your brand, or mentioning your products in their tweets, Instagram Stories, and TikTok videos every day. Why not incorporate that user-generated content into your brand’s social media calendar?You don’t have to take a wait-and-hope approach for user-generated content. You can actively encourage your audiences to develop UGC.

User Generated Content(UGC)

People write posts, upload photos, and shoot videos as they evaluate products they use in real life. If you’re in the cosmetics, apparel, household items, gadgets, books business – or other tangible product industry – reviews are a great source of UGC. Audiences see those reviews as social proof (or disproof) about the products.In some cases, brands ask their customers to post reviews and even offer a small gift in exchange. If you opt to reward creators for reviews, make sure they note that in their post. It’s important to their credibility and yours.

Types of UGC: Reviews

To promote people writing about your brand on social media, you can:<ul><li>Publish review requests on multiple places (a banner on your site, a mention in a post-purchase email, a QR code or sticker on your product package, etc.).</li><li>Create an incentive such as prizes or discounts on the next purchase for people who participate in a review challenge contest. (All reviews in the competition should note their involvement in the reward game.)</li><li>Ask for a review via emails or texts to your customers.</li><li>Post the request periodically on your social pages.</li></ul>

How To Encourage Reviews

Many people tag brand handles and use branded hashtags when posting their content. Some do it organically, and some do it because they’re being paid through sponsor deals.Encouraging tagged content:<ul><li>Add some originality to your product packaging (think Starbucks’ name cups or Apple’s stylish iPhone boxes.)</li><li>Create a backdrop or setting at your store or office that people will want to take a picture in front of.</li><li>Repost photos and videos with your brand mentions in your feed.</li><li>Host contests, such as the best photo of the month, and require people to tag your brand or use a brand hashtag to enter.</li></ul>

Tagged photos and videos

To run a creation challenge, determine the aspect of your brand it will promote:<ul><li>Product</li><li>Customer service</li><li>Customer experience or attitude to your brand</li></ul>Then, decide what you will ask the audience to do to enter. Don’t make it overly complicated, or people won’t enter but do make sure it’s legally compliant. Determine the prize.Develop a promotional content campaign to publicize the challenge, from social media posts to owned channels.

Develop A Creation Challenge

One of the most-watched video types on YouTube, unboxing content is exactly that – people opening boxes. A few years ago, <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/youtube-unboxing-videos-watch-time/">YouTube</a> said the amount of time people spent watching unboxing videos on their phones is the equivalent of watching the movie Love Actually more than 20 million times – over 2.5 billion minutes.Unboxing videos fuel curiosity and create a sense of desire in the viewers, converting them into your buyers. Just remember those holiday gifts you want to unpack, eager to see what is underneath the wrapping and cardboard.

Unboxing Videos

Most unboxing content comes from opening electronics, toys, cosmetics, and accessories. If you work in one of these industries, inspire your customers to unbox something with your brand logo.To do it well, pay attention to your packaging, including the mailing container. Add decorations to your boxes, use colors, and include a visual extra, such as a branded postcard or a little souvenir, inside the box.Invite your customers when they make the purchase – and before they open the box – to shoot an unboxing video and share it with your brand.

Encouraging Unboxing Videos

It is impossible to find and collect pieces of all your user-generated content manually. Instead, you can use social media monitoring tools to detect keywords related to your brand, product, campaign, etc. (You also can use them to identify potential opportunities for UGC through viral trends, popular interests, etc.) Three tools and web scanners that can help are:<ul><li>Awario</li><li>Mention</li><li>Mediatoolkit</li></ul>

See what happens with your user-generated content

UGC can be a valuable asset for your brand for several reasons. It helps you publish fresh content on your social channels without having to start from scratch. It expands your audience reach as the users who create also share and promote that content on their channels. Use it wisely as a secret weapon that helps you persuade prospects, improve your product, and tackle current marketing tasks.

Benefit from user-generated content

Don’t create all your social content from scratch. Let your audience help. Encourage them to create user-generated content – Content Marketing Institute

4 User-Generated Content Ideas (and Tools To Check If They Work) - Content Marketing Institute

MVPP stands for minimum viable PowerPoint. It is derived from the commonly known MVP — minimum viable product — a version of a product with a limited functionality created in a fast and cheap way. So the idea of the MVPP is a standard commercial offer creation, either simple Word document or in PowerPoint slides.
Cold selling to target companies is the next step. To strengthen your chances, make a follow-up call a couple of days later and ask for a reply to your commercial offer. The task is just to get the reply, be it positive or negative — preferably with feedback.

Create An MVPP Framework

If you create a presentation using some cloud service, it will be possible to update the presentation as you get feedback. This way, all subsequent experts will see the latest version.

A Presentation Saved In The Cloud

Contact relevant business experts or decision-makers who work at target companies. This strategy can work alongside the MVPP framework or be done independently. 
An important difference is that you should not try to sell your solution, like in the MVPP strategy, but ask for feedback instead. Your initial request should be similar to the following: “Hello, I’m contacting you as an expert in your field. I’m working on a project in your niche. Would you mind if I ask for some expert feedback?”

Utilize The Power Of Social Networks

This strategy is similar to the previous one, but the focus is on messengers.
The idea is to find sectoral chats and, again, ask for feedback about your startup idea there.

Consider Using Messenger Apps

Any B2B idea, no matter how complex it is, will be used by end users — ordinary people who work at a certain company. Some additional marketing analysis is required for this route, namely definition of end users, their avatar(s), needs and pain points and existing solutions they currently use. 
Validating the B2B idea using B2C individuals will most likely result in a decision to invest in development or not.

Divide A B2B Startup Idea Into A B2C Startup

Here are three ways to validate your B2B startup idea before investing in the development of a product.

Council Post: Three Options For Validating A B2B Startup Idea Cheaply And Quickly

A business plan is a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. It’s also a management tool that allows you to analyze results, make strategic decisions, and showcase how your business will operate, and grow.

The business plan

<ul><li>Without a business plan as a baseline, it will be far more difficult to track your progress, make adjustments, and have historical information readily available to reference when making difficult decisions. </li><li>Investors and loan providers need to know that you have a solid understanding of the trajectory of your business. You need to prove that there is an attainable and sustainable need for your solution, that you have a strong business strategy, and that your business can be financially stable. </li><li>By having a written business plan that you’re regularly reviewing, you can make confident decisions.</li></ul>

Why write a business plan?

<ul><li>Keep it short. Business plans should be short and concise. You want your business plan to be read. </li><li>Accommodate your investors, and keep explanations of your product simple and direct.</li><li>Test your business idea. Working through your business plan, and starting with a one-page pitch, can help you test the viability of your business idea long before launching.</li><li>Establish goals and objectives. You should know what you want to get out of your business upfront. </li><li>Don’t be intimidated. Did you know that the vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs aren’t business experts? </li></ul>

5 tips to write a great business plan quickly and easily

<ul><li>Executive summary: An overview of your business and your plans. </li><li>Opportunity: What are you actually selling and how are you solving a problem (or “need”) for your market? </li><li>Execution: How are you going to take your opportunity and turn it into a business? </li><li>Company and management summary: Investors look for great teams in addition to great ideas. </li><li>Financial plan: Your business plan isn’t complete without a financial forecast. </li><li>Appendix: If you need more space for product images or additional information, use the appendix for those details. </li></ul>

Key components of a business plan

The executive summary of your business plan introduces your company, explains what you do, and lays out what you’re looking for from your readers. Structurally, it is the first chapter of your business plan. And while it’s the first thing that people will read, consider writing it last, because once you know the details of your business inside and out, you will be better prepared to write your executive summary. Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan.

Executive summary

<ul><li>What are your business objectives?</li><li>What is your target market and how will you position yourself?</li><li>Who are the key players on your team?</li><li>What are your expectations for growth and how will you achieve it?</li><li>What are your funding requirements? </li></ul>

Key questions to answer with your executive summary

A good business plan will identify the target market segments and then provide some data to indicate how fast each segment is growing. When identifying target markets, a classic method is to use the TAM, SAM, and SOM breakdown:<ul><li>TAM: Your Total Available or Addressable Market (everyone you wish to reach with your product)</li><li>SAM: Your Segmented Addressable Market or Served Available Market (the portion of TAM you will target)</li><li>SOM: Your Share Of the Market (the subset of your SAM that you will realistically reach—particularly in the first few years of your business).</li></ul>

TAM, SAM, and SOM

Most business plans include market research and compare their features against their competition using a SWOT analysis. The most important thing to illustrate in this section of your business plan is how your solution is different or better than other offerings that a potential customer might consider. Investors will want to know what advantages you have over the competition and how you plan on differentiating yourself.One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make in their business plans is stating that they don’t have any competition.

Competition

The opportunity section of your business plan should provide enough information and data to prove that there is a need for your business and that you understand how to position yourself in a given market. To help you develop this section, try to answer these questions:<ul><li>Who is my typical customer? Who is my ideal customer? How will I target them?</li><li>What pain points do my customers have? How do they currently alleviate that pain point?</li><li>How does my solution solve their problem? </li><li>Who are my competitors? How does my solution differ from competitors?</li></ul>

Key questions to answer with your opportunity analysis

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments (also called target marketing), how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.Before you even think about writing your marketing plan, you must have your target market well-defined and have your buyer persona(s) fleshed out. Without truly understanding who you are marketing to, a marketing plan will have little value.

Marketing and sales plan

A business plan is only a document on paper without a real path to get the work done, complete with a schedule, defined roles, and key responsibilities. Investors will want to see that you understand what needs to happen to make your plans a reality and that you are working on a realistic schedule. Start with a quick review of your milestones. Milestones are planned major goals.

Milestones and metrics

This section covers the functionality of your business. To help you develop this section, try to answer these questions:<ul><li>What marketing and operational channels are best for my business?</li><li>How will my pricing strategy differ from competitors?</li><li>What technology or services will you need to invest in?</li><li>What will my branding look like? What elements do I need to create?</li><li>What metrics do I need to track? What does success look like?</li><li>What milestones do I need to hit? What steps are necessary to reach them?</li></ul>

Key questions to answer with your execution

The company overview will most likely be the shortest section of your business plan. For a plan that you will share with people outside of your company, this section should include:<ul><li>Mission statement</li><li>Intellectual property</li><li>A review of your company’s legal structure and ownership</li><li>The business location</li><li>A brief history of the company if it’s an existing company.</li></ul>

Company overview

The company overview is meant to help you identify how you will operate, as well as what positions, departments, or other structures you need to implement. To help you develop this section, try to answer these questions:<ul><li>Who makes up my current team? What roles need to be filled?</li><li>What is my core mission? How does it affect business operations?</li><li>Do I need a physical location? Where should it be located?</li><li>What is my company structure? How will that change over time?</li></ul>

Key questions to answer with your company overview

Your financial plan is meant to help you understand what your expenses are, what it will take to be profitable, how much cash you need to keep on hand, and what you will be doing with any funding. You don’t need to have actual financial data at this point.To help you develop this section, try to answer these questions:<ul><li>What are your sales expectations for the next year?</li><li>What expenses are necessary to operate?</li><li>When will you become cash flow positive?</li><li>How much cash do you need upfront to fund growth?</li><li>How will you use the loans or investments? What funding is necessary for specific endeavors?</li></ul>

Financial plan

Learn how to write a business plan, with our expert-driven step-by-step guide for 2021. Start writing your business plan today.

How to Write a Business Plan

<ul>
<li>Taking a stance can help widen the addressable market. Socially-aware consumers don't just buy products, they buy the social, emotional, and functional stories behind products.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Long-term thinking is a competitive advantage in itself and it is often cost-effective due to the reduction of a brand's carbon footprint eventually reducing energy consumption.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Sustainability can help de-risk the business by leveraging social listening.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Brands that proactively focus on sustainability initiatives are capable of generating the greatest social and environmental impacts and long-term business growth.</li>
</ul>

The Principles Behind Efficient Brand Sustainability

Brand value is the aggregate result of perceptions and mindsets. It typically translates into quantifiable metrics such as sales volume, equity, audience size, and market potential.  All of the elements stated above allude to consumption, and therefore to a brand's sustainability performance. How a customer sees the brand is the main coating of brand vcalue and this can effectively affect the company's revenue and the overall market.

Brand Value

Brands implement sustainability because they either care - conforming to stakholder expectations - or comply with regulations; often a combination of both. Sustainable investing enable individuals to select investments beased on values and personal priorities. Moreover, the demand from younger, more affluent, environmentally aware, and socially conscious consumers are creating the conditions for a necessary evolution in sustainability management: from surface level-differentiating factor to all-encompassing competitive advantage.

The Moral Motivations for Investing in Sustainability

In the race to sustainability, many brands are diluting their identity and relying on undifferentiated strategies to ensure environmental efficiency and social compliance along their supply chains. Thus, the challenge lies in the quality of sustainability investments brands are willing to pursue, but also in their ability to communicate the reasoning behind these efforts.

How to Turn Sustainability Into a Brand and Business Strength

A large asteroid struck our planet and killed dinosaurs about 66 million years ago, according to archaeological studies. 
This theory is widely accepted, but new research shows that the dinosaur population and the various species were in a state of steep decline many million years before the asteroid hit Mexico.

The Fate Of The Dinosaurs

<ul><li>Crocodiles are lizards are ectothermic(cold-blooded) animals.</li><li>Humans and birds are endothermic(warm-blooded).</li><li>Dinosaurs are somewhere in between these two and are classified as mesothermal.</li></ul>Dinosaurs needed a warm climate to survive, and any sharp temperature decrease could have been fatal for them. Changes in vegetation and climatic deterioration could also be factors in the eventual decline of the dinosaur, paving the way for primates and humans.

Dinosaurs: Mammals Or Reptiles

The arrival of a cataclysmic asteroid strike helped quicken the end of the dinosaurs. But might they have been on the decline anyway?

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Hashim I
@hashimi

Don’t Confuse Strategy with Lofty Goals

The Goal

What Is Content Operations? A Straight-Forward Guide

What They Don’t Teach You in Business School

Out of the shadows: Sustainably improving workplace mental health

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Hashim I@hashimi

Don’t Confuse Strategy with Lofty Goals

The Goal

What Is Content Operations? A Straight-Forward Guide

What They Don’t Teach You in Business School

Out of the shadows: Sustainably improving workplace mental health

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Hashim I
@hashimi