Operationalizing Strategies with an Agile Approach: Don’t Sweat the Details
Imagine you found an old lamp in your attic, rubbed it, and a genie popped out. You now have three wishes!
Being the business-minded individual that you are, your first two wishes go something like this:
“I wish my vision for my business reflected my core values!”
and
“I wish my goals for my business were concrete and attainable!”
Now, for your third wish. You know the next step is to turn these visions and goals into realities. But rather than jumping to the end, what if you used you used your wish to gain powerful operating strategies that would not just turn these current visions and goals real, but all future ones to follow? That sounds like a good wish to me!
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY
We’ve addressed establishing your vision as well as the importance of setting clear goals. Now let’s talk strategy for tackling your business dreams (no magic genie required). While this may seem like the most daunting step, remember: you already did the groundwork! Your goals are SMART, clear and reflective of your core values.
But how do we make these goals more than just peppy, motivational vision boards posted on the wall? Through established and effective operational strategies.
Think of strategy like the pulling back of a drawstring to fire an arrow. The goal is to have the arrow hit the bullseye. If all you focus on is pulling back and letting the arrow fly, odds are it’s not going to land exactly where you want it to. Operationalizing your strategy is all the things you need to add to your archery to make it successful, such as:
Visualize your goal: See the arrow in that bullseye spot and KNOW that you will get there.
Account for the wind: Be loose and flexible, while staying focused. Pay attention to the things moving around you that might impact your strategy.
Don’t be afraid to reset: Just because you pulled back and are ready to fire doesn’t mean you can’t reset yourself and draw again.
Utilizing operating strategies allows you to take aim at your goal, fire your arrow, then ADJUST and REDIRECT to best optimize your success.
TOOLS TO MAKE VISIONS AND GOALS REALITY
The best-operating strategies take something big (i.e., your business goals) and turn them into smaller, more manageable objectives. Sometimes, layering different operating strategies on top of each other will be the best method to get the results you’re looking for.
Think of all the different ways you can break down a year: 365 days, or 12 months, or even 8,760 hours. But from a business strategy perspective, these aren’t the most efficient ways to think about your time. Programs such as The 12 Week Year or 90 Day Year frame your fiscal year in much more manageable ways. They do this by:
1. Highlighting your goals, allowing you to be clear on what you should be spending your time trying to achieve.
2. Breaking your time down into Time Blocks, focusing on ONE project during these blocks, and working on it until it’s complete.
3. Setting short-term goals in order to accomplish your long-term ones.
4. Reviewing your goals and results, knowing it’s OK to revise and refocus as you go.
In my own business, I utilize the agile project management approach for tackling projects. An iterative method to seeing a project through its lifecycle, the agile project management approach doesn’t waste time getting bogged down with details. Rather, it starts with the big picture goal then takes small, incremental steps to get there. This is in sharp contrast to the older ‘Waterfall approach’, where details are thoroughly established first, with the implementation of goals coming later.
The agile approach FOCUSES on a priority, SPRINTS towards it, implements, assesses, then moves on to the next goal to repeat again and again.
OPERATIONALIZING YOUR SUCCESS
These operationalizing strategies do more than just lay out the path for you to achieve your goals; they help your business thrive and survive, even in the toughest of circumstances. Just look at the past couple of years! The small businesses that were able to flexibly navigate the roughest part of the Covid-19 pandemic did so by being AGILE and PIVOTING to stay afloat. Some even found ways to capitalize on the situation. Case in point: In the earliest days of the pandemic, a restaurant food distributor located outside of the Boston area made the brilliant decision to redirect their trucks to deliver groceries right to their customer’s doors!
Rather than stick with the same business model and risk the viability of the business, they pivoted to fit the needs of their customers and to ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS.
Business owners can often feel as though they are failing at their big goals because they’re not seeing substantial progress day-to-day. This is merely indicative of the need for a shift in perspective.
Rather than searching for the small bits of daily progress towards a 10-year goal, businesses should be breaking down that 10-year goal into a 5-year goal...Then that 5-year goal into a 1-year one...Then utilizing strategies such as the 12 Week Year or an agile project management approach to block out time to create REAL progress on their long-term goals.
As a fractional COO, I specialize in helping businesses streamline their operational strategies to optimize their success. I work with you to get clear on your vision, to define your goals, and to establish and implement strategies to turn these goals into tangible realities.
You may not have a magic genie from a bottle, but you DO have the tools and strategies to grant your own wishes. We can make it happen together.