Hinewai’s vision is for her gym to be the happiest place to work out for people of all ages in Hamilton in three years. She wants to develop a strategy that can help her get there.
She has looked at the Hamilton gym market, identified activities that made her Tauranga operation succeed, and worked out some options to create her own space as a community-focused gym in Hamilton. She feels ready to decide on her strategy and put her plans into action.
First, Hinewai looks at the other gyms in Hamilton. There are three major gyms, each offering similar training programmes but with different membership rates based on their location. She sees that she can’t compete directly with them based on price.
Hinewai’s business partner Sam is from Hamilton and has worked with two of the major gyms before. Hinewai identifies that Sam’s a key resource who understands the community better than anyone, and has the networks to recruit the right trainers for her gym. She also notes the other key resources and activities she needs to make her business unique.
Hinewai is keen to explore some options to stand out from competition. To make her gym space welcoming for everyone, especially for elderly people, she identifies some key points of difference her Hamilton gym will need. For example, she’ll need specialist trainers who can provide yoga, Pilates, and other balance and physical therapy programmes. She’ll need her facilities to suit people with restricted mobility too. Hinewai spots an opportunity to tailor the fit-out and decoration to suit that segment of the market. She hasn’t yet fitted out the space, so senior-friendly layout and furnishing choices won’t add much cost for her. Competitors would have to tear out some of their current setup to make changes.
Hinewai writes her strategy statement.
Once you are clear on your strategic objective, you need detail to implement it. Everything you do must line up with your overall goal. Creating a scorecard will help you develop all the projects and targets that will go towards meeting your strategic objective. Then your scorecard will help you track what you do and see how it contributes to your overall objective. You can create your strategy scorecard in three steps.
A scorecard for strategy can work only if you have a clear picture of what you’re trying to achieve. Everything in your scorecard relates to your strategy statement. This statement helps you describe what your business will look like at a set time in the future. If you have already written one, you have a great starting point for your scorecard.
This stage breaks your strategic objective into more detail in areas that are crucial for your business. For example, if you are a retailer you may be interested in improving your customer service. If you are a charity, you might be interested in community and wellbeing goals. Figuring out your detailed objectives helps you find how to measure progress, set targets and plan projects that help you reach them.
Split your strategy’s overall objective into four categories. Here are some popular categories that could be a good starting point.
Financial objectives are common for most strategy scorecards, but other areas could differ. If you pick your own categories, make sure they fit your overall strategy. For example, if you want to focus on sustainability you could use that as a category, writing detailed objectives for energy use, waste reduction, and other related topics.
Plan what you’ll do for each category. Everything you do should improve your performance in that category and contribute towards your overall strategic objective. Hinewai in our example above might pick customers as a category, and identify detailed objectives related to:
Keep the strategy statement and your overall objective at the centre and check how your four categories contribute towards achieving it. Your detailed objectives in each category need to be consistent with each other, and with the objectives in other categories. For example, you might check your financial targets are consistent with your objectives for innovation and learning or community objectives.
Make sure your timelines for these tasks align with your overall objective. Some of your projects could be quick and relatively simple. Others could be more complex projects that take months or years to complete.
The smaller the business, the more areas you generally want to improve. But connecting each detailed objective to your overall strategy helps you focus on the right measures and targets. For example, you might define ‘increased sales over last year’ as one measure for growing your profits, and choose ‘20% by value’ as your target.
When you’re working towards your strategic objective your measures will help you track your progress. For example, you might check against your eventual targets or set a series of milestones along the way.