A really nice framework for creating a strategy outline while still remaining agile.
Updated: Jan 23
When engaging as an interim CEO (or whatever leader / crisis management position is required) The first week with a new company consists of a meeting and drinks followed by a week of sending me documents and having calls to clarify their intentions, vision and processes.
Within a week, I can generally speak with people in the industry, read all of the documents, call past customers, call staff, look laterally at other industries and businesses with patterns that could be used/ foretasted for this business etc. and come up with some initial prioritisation actions and a list of recommendations before jumping into strategy (or usually more commonly, creating value for the future) work.
A set of priorities and recommendations could look like this.
RE CRM
Hubspot has X contacts.
Shit in shit out. Create consistent daily updates. Tag relevant people and create tasks.
X has done well with creating lists, however we need extra fields: type of stakeholder, how close they are to being a client, where they are based, contact owner (and who should own which contacts),
Where are the inbox conversations coming from? Is there a chatbot on the website?
Snippets for different calls - who are the different sales calls we can make
What success did you have with your outbound templates? I’d suggest trialling more permission based outreaches
What metrics should we have in dashboard? I think it should be readership of emails?
Strategy X Email 8.4% open rate. I’d suggest we only send highly impactful touch points:
Can we please look at the top view/click contacts here and add specialised info/ flags for them: 21.4% open rate:
Make comments and notes on all hanging fruit and tag team
Start the social publishing through Hubspot
It looks like the forms on the website are Hubspot generated - correct?
How accurate are the sponsorship and partnership deal pipelines in HS?
Let’s upload important decks to HS and send them out through HS emails - we can see exactly who views, for how long and what they click
Let’s create some workflows - what are the forms and workflows we could create (user stories)
Here’s the link to HS/ Eventbrite integration. At the bottom the other Ticketing systems are shown: Implement
RE the lists on X: Sponsor/ Partners - can I recreate them in deals?, What is market research?, Can we change Content mgmt to the Excel?, I guess the biggest problem with it really is the exporting - unless you can show me different? RE Airtable lists - maybe I can do it after this event? It’s not high priority - but will be better for the future. I can still link the hubspot etc.
RE Social Generally.
LI/Facebook.
Always re-share through your personal pages, it gets further outreach and is free Check re blog posting on Linkedin through company page
Have you tried any LI marketing? I think all of your potential Key stakeholders are there?
RE Events in general.
How can we make them more data driven
How can we make seriously exclusive content - first to know
How can we capture audience data
How can we drive the Xagenda from the needs of the key stakeholders
What are the core messages for the X
If Xis the most successful/ easiest - wouldn’t you run that in multiple countries -3/4x per year and add a day of X and a day of Xuntil they get a big enough following themselves? TBD
What is an X? Pay $1500gbp, venue TBD on volume, 50/50
What is a community event?
How does X stuff work?
Discounted for X: because they are where the data come from Fame / distributions
Money
Talent
Education
Promotions
How have the promotions worked in the past individually?
What’s a user study?
RE PR, Media, CM - how do you use them? Can you rate out of X them as supporters?
Discounts?
RE Budget
What is the X goal - and outlook - $100,000 GBP , $4361GBP
What is the X goal - and outlook - $200,000 , $0
Stage 1 recommendations
Leave website/ branding (I’ll learn webflow) (change colour if you want) Make small changes.
Start a running hubspot properly with eventbrite and entering data Yes + the app
Do key stakeholder interviews right away > XXX
Add paid XX
Collect data through: X, X, X)
Add/ validate X/ X
Validate for future in person at the X with iPhone online forms + follow up to data base: membership, awards night, why they came, what could be better, what they are looking for: community, talent, investment, learning, credibility, distribution: what they’d find impactful with Data capture/display/usage, segment selling, what do exhibitors get/ care about, ambassador's to refer, referral program
Sell and market hard - experimental and follow ups. Start with low hanging fruit, Create email chain plan to current database, LinkedIn Outbound, Paid trials
Let’s get a X more testimonials
Revert to X only, with extra 2 days of X/X (select 3/4 countries)
To-dos:
Hub spot training (creating dashboards) DATE:
Complete content page (content strategy page)
Complete strategy one pager
Strategy
Get memberships for data
World first news/ announcement/ findings
Enable investments
Once we have agreed as a management team, I'd then move on to organising and building the frameworks to execute the short-term goals - but also seed them with a document to begin populating about creating an agile strategy into the future.
I believe in building long-term sustainable businesses with a 10 year vision, yearly strategies, quarterly tactics and daily reviews.
After both the above and below are completed, you are off and running.
Here's what I give them to start out with.
Setting the scene.
Key questions.
What business are we in?
What kind of business do we currently run, how does it work in general, what are the pro’s and con’s.
What are the ultimate benefits we seek to deliver?
What are we actually trying to deliver, to whom, and where else could they get it.
What purpose we have to do what we do?
Why are we doing this
Where can/do we fit into the ecosystem?
Where does X and all of its assets/ elements sit in the competitive ecosystem
What are the most prevalent vision scenarios?
What are the key future outlooks that should affect our strategic decision making
What is our ultimate goal?
What are you trying to achieve with the business A) Return B) Time frame C) Impact
Secondary questions.
What are our sacred cows?
What are the big things that we have in our current arsenal that we could be leveraging further, that no-one else has.
What positive and negative past events can we recall?
What have we done/ tried in the past that worked and didn’t work well.
What constraints do we have?
Capital, skills, timing, geography, industry, social behaviour.
What opportunities do we have?
What is the list of key opportunities we currently have within reach?
What priorities do we have?
What are the short-term key priorities
What are our knowledge gaps?
What are we missing to be able to execute the larger vision
What are our personnel gaps?
What do we need to make our goals easier to reach
Forces.
What are the major external forces facing us, our industry and our business type and why?
Things like Brexit..
What are the major internal forces affecting us currently?
Things like lack of accurate data…
Who are our key stakeholders
What do we think they value and what are their hierarchy of needs?
Potential vertical map
What are the 3 major strategic verticals, what are the long, medium and short term goals / activities and how can/ could they link together so that we remain flexible.
*Ideally in this section you build a 9x9 table and fill out the ideas that could be executed for the 3 verticals but in the short, medium and long-term.
Once you had completed them - you could start drawing priority or commonality links and visibly see the agility/ interlinking between your strategic ideas sitting right in-front of you!
Ideation pages
Links to external strategy pages for your train of thought and discussion.
X
Y
Z
No pain no gain matrix
No painer
Strategies that hold well under some scenarios and are indifferent in others
No brainer
Strategies that hold well under all scenarios
No gainer
Strategies that are ill-advised under all scenarios
Big pain, big gain
Strategies that hold well under some scenarios but may be adverse under others
Testing scenarios
How and what are we going to test before we decide on a path. Test live interviewing at the X on a tablet. Create associated forms.
X inclusions
Y strategy
Z
Strategic objective outline
The story.
Revenue lines.
Products and services.
Capital and resources required.
Staffing changes and requirements.
Let me know what you think or how I could improve.
Of-course if you'd like to use anything, please do.
J
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