Strategy Guidemap's premier business growth strategy masterclass, Grow Your Business, is a 4-hour training experience. This course teaches advanced growth principles, often using the analogy of a mountaineering journey toward your peak (the inspiration for our blog name, Reach the Peak). To complement this imagery, we introduce strategy "guidewords"—simple phrases that serve as trail markers. These guidewords encapsulate key aspects of the training, helping participants to easily grasp and remember how to maintain a focus on strategic growth.
The first guideword, "Be Intentional," summarizes the initial 30 minutes of the training, which includes instruction and activities to clarify what strategy is and what it is not. Being intentional is crucial as it sets the foundation for purposeful actions and decisions, ensuring that every step taken is aligned with the rules for success associated with the core strategy quadrant selected by the company's executives. These concepts are taught in the next segment of the training. If you do a quick internet search for "core strategy" you will find all sorts of helpful things that, unfortunately, are not actually core strategy. Things like "A statement of a business's objectives and how it plans to achieve them" - definitely not core strategy. Or, "defining mission and vision" - also not core strategy.
Core strategy is simple and profound. It is at the heart of the training and is without a doubt that concept most appreciated by the majority of business owners who complete the program. Yet, I have not found a clear explanation of the concept of core strategy in any of these many online sources. The one exception is a post by Chris Gibbons who acknowledges the origins of the core strategy concept to be based on the work of Michael Porter of Harvard. His post is brief and his purpose is not to detail all the intricacies, so it is fairly simplified. Yet, Gibbons provides a concise and helpful description. He is exceptionally gifted at making complex concepts concise and easy to apply. Presentation of the Grow Your Business training is all modeled after his way of teaching - profound clarity.
In the meantime, if you are working on mission and vision or goals and objectives, I do not want to discourage you. Those are important - very important. But, they are not indicative of the rules that govern success for your particular business and until you understand those rules (which, again, are rooted in the core strategy quadrant in which your business hopes to reside), you're mission, vision, goals, and objectives will be woefully inadequate to enable strong strategic growth decision making.
Every leader must first understand core strategy. Strategy Guidemap will help you do that!
