Are you spending enough time working on your business strategy?

Past research from The Alternative Board found the average entrepreneur spends 68.1% of their time working ‘in’ their business (tackling day-to-day tasks, putting out fires, etc.) and only 31.9% of the time working ‘on’ their business (e.g., long-term goals, strategic planning).

Revisiting and updating your business strategy is vital for a growing business – and that means making more time to focus on strategic thinking.

Key things to revisit in your current business strategy

Test your financial scenarios, cashflow and budgeting:

Stress-test your cashflow by creating worst-case scenarios and adjusting your operating budgets to reflect the current rising costs for raw materials or labour. Look for any non-essential spending and set clear targets for preserving your cash levels and working capital.

Revisit your customer value proposition

Re-evaluate your customer value proposition (CVP) to confirm it still meets the changing needs of your market and target audience. This might mean simplifying your product offerings, adding a high-value service tier or putting money into deeper customer research and development. 

Diversify your product/service offerings

Diversify your products and services to help you engage with new or underserved customer segments. Reducing your dependence on a single revenue stream stops you ‘having all your eggs in one basket’ and helps you reduce the overall risk to the business. 

Match talent and resources to your growth strategy

Review your team structure to make sure your key talent is focused on growth and high-return activities. 

Putting money into targeted up-skilling and training can improve your overall capabilities, while outsourcing to fill any critical gaps will help you capture new opportunities.

If you’ve not revisited your business strategy in a while, now’s the time to get proactive. Talk to our team and we’ll work with you to review, revise and rework your strategy.