As the final half of the year begins, it's important to consider how you're positioning your organization for the future. As part of this, I advocate for a mid-year check-in on strategy. This will allow you to make necessary adjustments in time to keep progress toward annual goals on track.
After all, your organization, your customers, the external environment and other factors, change over time. So the strategy you put in place at the the start of the year may not reflect your current situation.
When conducting a mid-year strategy check-in, it's important to be thorough, honest and pragmatic. This includes examining what you've learned during the first half of the year and applying that learning going forward.
It can be difficult to have this kind of discipline in June when you and your team have already put so much work into developing your annual strategy and executing it. But letting strategy ride without a check-in is a mistake, and the six-month mark is exactly the right time revisit and re-think. In fact, focusing on strategy again right now can make the difference between merely surviving or truly growing and thriving the remainder of the year and beyond.
Here's how to make your mid-year strategy check-in an invaluable annual exercise:
Mid-year is a key time to address areas of your organization that aren’t working well (when you still have time to fix issues!). While you may be able to scrape by with poor customer service, or lackluster products and services or operational inefficiencies, most organizations have a lot of smart competitors and can't afford to leave problems unaddressed. Be honest about the challenges your organization is facing and creative in your solutions.
Most organizations do a few things really well. So spend some time with your team figuring out what your core competencies are and how to build on them. Look for strengths that present competitive advantages as these will give you a springboard to grow, scale and improve. If you can build on those strengths, you will increase your momentum and improve your chances of reaching your goals.
Creating a strategy shouldn’t be done in isolation or a vacuum. Once you've looked internally at problem areas and strengths, scan the external environment to see how competitors, customers or the market may have shifted. Align the changes you're making to fix problems and any strategic or tactical adjustments with the current conditions and realities of the external environment.
