Cerridwen Strategy
Fusing intuition and logic to create the business results you want
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”
Henry David Thoreau
Examples of smaller pieces of work
Shorter pieces of work may be just the catalyst you need to get on the right track with your business. The following give you a flavour of what we can do to help you switch to a more creative way of working as quickly as possible. This may benefit smaller businesses with limited resource and budget.
Keeping the big picture simple
- What you do now and the factors that impact this
- What you want to do
- The scale of change needed
1. The helicopter view of what you want to do
A short exercise to consider where you want to go and trigger deeper strategy work if needed, looking at:
Review of your goals and objectives:
- Are they the right ones?
- Do they align?
- Do you know what success looks like?
- Do you have any proximate, near-term objectives to build momentum?
2. Review of your current ambition
A review of the robustness of your business strategy if you already have one:
- Is there ownership and understanding?
- Does it meet your challenge/goals?
- Is there cohesion within your plan of action?
- Do people buy into it?
3. Review of the current strategy & plan
Focusing on specific areas
4. Your information and technology
- When you look at your data, are you clear on the question you’re trying to answer?
- Are you able to extract only the data needed (rather than look at the swamp)?
- Data versus business instinct – where would you draw the line at the moment?
Review of whether your in-house systems and data support what you’re trying to do:
5. Early warning system
Review whether you have a sufficient way of spotting early warnings of problems (e.g. ahead of profit falls or customer dissatisfaction)
Focusing on your people
6. Keeping strategy simple - training in how to build your own strategy
1-2 day training to provide an overview of designing and implementing strategy, allowing you to progress on your own. It dispels the myth and keeps it simple.
7. Commercial mindset - training
Short training to hone commercial skills for dealing with suppliers, sub-contractors and customers