Developing Strategy: a Pragmatic Approach Jo & Charlie Whitehead

An experienced strategist, who has been head of strategy at a major UK company, discusses the six questions and her advice on how to use them - plus many otherwise points about strategy!

Strategy involves answering six questions but, if you already have a good idea of the answer to some of the questions, you don't always have to start with question 1. In this short episode, we describe how to decide which question to start with and the different types of strategy processes that can lead to

At the end, what counts is picking the best option
 

All your analysis is in vain if you don't identify the most interesting options!

Question 4, defining the issue, is perhaps the most critical step in the strategy process, but it is often skipped over without sufficient reflection and debate.

Sometimes the level of uncertainty means that forecasting is not possible. Perhaps the uncertainties are hard to quantify. Perhaps there is too much uncertainty for any one forecast to make sense. This episode provides some advice on how to deal with that sort of very tricky, but common, situation.