Leadership - Strategy - developing
Strategy - developing
A.P.I.M.A.
A.P.I.M.A. stands for Assess, Plan, Implement, Monitor and Act.
This system is used in problem solving and is easily adapted to the development of the vision strategy.
Assess
What do you need to think about when drawing up your vision strategy?
Who?
Who is interested, who are the stakeholders?
Don’t forget those that have an indirect interest as well as the obvious ones.
Possible third parties?
Financial
What is your current position and what is it likely to be in a the future for the period of your vision?
What external circumstances might influence this?
Politics both at home and abroad?
Risk analysis
What may go wrong? Consider all of the risks on the macro scale of your vision.
What are the negative effects if you don’t achieve your vision?
Risk analysis is covered in more detail in ‘The Complete Risk management package’.
Trend analysis
What are the key influences that may impact upon your vision over the period required.
For example, movement in exchange rates, rapid rises in property prices and rental, political upheaval, changes in drug trial laws, other legal issues, environmental concerns etc.
SWOT analysis
You can use this to assess particular areas of the business for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
Competitor analysis
You can’t expect your competitors to stand still. It is quite likely they are doing the same analysis as you.
Where will they be in a few years?
What advantage could they gain or currently possess?
Plan
Here we need to focus on the plan to ‘implement’ the vision, that is, how do we get everyone’s buy-in and communicate it.
This is nothing to do with all the tasks that will have to be completed over a time period to turn the vision into reality.
These are areas we have mentioned already.
- Get consensus and buy-in from key people.
- Allow time for the idea to develop.
- Present it to a wider audience.
Implement
Any ‘presentation’ should indicate key aspects of a vision.
- Provide a vivid image of this future vision.
- Make sure everyone understands it.
- Clarify the route (plan and schedule in broad terms) to the vision and check understanding.
- A vision means change. Emphasise the benefits and what it will mean to individuals.
- Be prepared for questions.
- Carry out a survey of the buy-in using the simple score method discussed earlier [see The vision personalities].
- Accept and discuss the questions arising from the simple score method.
Monitor
At intervals you must review the validity of the vision and its buy-in and understanding.
Many things could and will change during this process.
Make sure that the vision is kept to the fore as often as possible.
Act
If monitoring of the plan indicates the need for change then this is when you act to bring things back on track.