Much as your own spine serves to tie together many different parts of your body to create capability for movement, a strategy spine shows key stakeholders exactly how all the pieces fit.
Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School, author
Takeaways of Note:
Back from the Future – first, be clear on objectives, scope, & key advantages, for ~5-6 year timeframe
6 Elements to Creating the Strategy Spine
- Sources of revenue – who is going to provide funds to you? through what vehicles? for what reasons?
- Key assumptions – lay out the most important assumptions you are making with respect to your sources of revenue (by definition, you’re preparing for a world that doesn’t yet exist)
- Key Goals by time horizon – metrics for stakeholders to determine progress toward your key objectives, at some future point in time (may change over time as you convert assumptions into knowledge)
- Revenue implications by your time horizon – define success before you even start working on a plan in uncertain conditions
- Necessary supporting investments – you want stakeholders to understand the connection between future potential & investments today
- Additional infrastructure needs – distinguish between investments needed to operate at all, and the ‘supporting investments’ necessary to your strategy
Bonus Nugget
“Think of this as a living document bringing the principles of agile working to strategy — you can create one, learn more, get feedback, and update it as new information comes in. What it allows you to see, in a simple format, is how all the different pieces of revenue and investment fit together — or don’t. You can now use it to work backward to establish the annual metrics and goalposts that becomes part of your operating plan”