Strategic Plan

Chris C Fox Consulting

Direction

Vision

Better Strategy (one decision at a time.)

Mission

Chris C Fox Consulting helps financial services decision makers develop & execute better strategies more effectively.

Values

Mutual Respect and Trust

in relationships. Even when two people violently disagree with each other, there is invariably some value to be gleaned from both of their perspectives.

Rigour

in analysis. Lazy analysis usually does nothing more than confirm existing preconceptions. Only by really pulling the data apart are you likely to find true insight.

Differentiation

by design. Organisations best achieve their potential by charting their own path through their competitive environment. Bland, me-too strategies achieve mediocre results. Successfully differentiated strategies are the result of the systemic analysis of each organisation's unique strengths and weaknesses, and of the changes and trends which present it with both challenges and opportunities.

Experience

in teams. Experience counts. We will never try and cross-sell you a team of junior consultants while our more experienced staff go off in search of the next engagement.

Discipline

in execution. A Peter Drucker said: "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." Successful strategy execution requires organisations to maintain focus and stay the course with the big exciting things as well as the small but essential things.

Goals

Analysis

Goal Statement: Analyse your strategic environment, competitive future, and relative strengths and weaknesses

Our preferred approach is to work with your existing teams to understand everything you already know about your capabilities and industry before overlaying our own extensive knowledge gained from reading widely and networking within the industry.

Organisations are often surprised at the amount of knowledge they already possess. However, it usually requires a skilled sleuth to hunt it down, cut through entrenched political positioning and preconceptions and synthesise it in a way that makes it actionable. We have a nose for getting to the bottom of things and are fluent in the languages spoken by different disciplines such as actuarial, finance, risk, operations, sales, marketing and HR.

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." (W.Edwards Deming)

Formulation

Goal Statement: Formulate your strategy

Strategy is fundamentally about choice. And choice requires options and alternatives. If you're faced with a single choice - "invest or fail" - you're not doing strategy.

Strategy requires you to develop and evaluate meaningful options and alternatives. It requires you to choose to pursue some, and, equally importantly, to choose to not pursue others. And it requires you to be able to describe those choices and the consequences you are seeking in a way that everyone in your organisation can understand and get behind.

In strategy, as with all choice, some stakeholders perceive themselves to have come out as winners while others will not. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Often, existing teams within an organisation are too close and too invested to be able to do this effectively, and objective outside help produces a better result.

Articulation

Goal Statement: Articulate your strategy

Even the most brilliant strategy will fail if you can't explain it so that people will be willing and able to execute it.

A strategy which is so vaguely expressed that it allows for everyone to continue with what they'd originally intended to do is unlikely to deliver results.

Strategy should be expressed in terms of vivid, clear and aligned mission, vision, values, goals, objectives, KPIs and targets, with clearly expressed initiatives to achieve them. Strategy should include the high-level explanations of what is to be achieved and why, as well as the detailed explanations of how it will be achieved.

Review

Goal Statement: Review your strategy

Just because you already have a strategy, does not mean it would not benefit from external and independent review. Is it clearly articulated, are stakeholders and staff aligned behind it, is the business organised to deliver it effectively, and is it delivering the anticipated results?

The are all questions that can useful be asked by an experienced and independent reviewer. If you do have a problem, early identification can give you the opportunity to correct your course.

Execution

Goal Statement: Execute your strategy

Once your strategy is set, implementation can begin. However, as Helmuth von Moltke famously remarked: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy". The same is true of business strategy. No matter how carefully you plan, you cannot guarantee how customers, competitors and regulators will respond. In addition, experience shows that, after the initial hubris of the launch of a new strategy, organisations have a tendency to revert to what they were doing before.Strategy needs to be a living process, with regular, controlled and communicated tactical and strategic adjustments.

Strategy needs to be a living process, with regular, controlled and communicated tactical and strategic adjustments.

We provide programme management and direction that goes well beyond traditional project management and really gets to the heart of what is required to make your strategy succeed.

Target Operating Model ("TOM")

Goal Statement: Develop and deliver your Target Operating Model (TOM)

All too often, charismatic leaders announce bold new strategies, and then simply sit back expecting their organisations to magically deliver them.

The same old machine won't magically produce a different result.

Strategy delivery invariably requires substantial change in terms of people, process and technology.This is where designing and delivering a Target Operating Model will help you to deliver your strategy.

Process

Goal Statement: Design and implement your strategic planning process

Most organisation do strategic planning on an annual basis, and review on a quarterly basis. Both planning and review require careful consideration if they are not to degenerate into tick box exercises or battles of political will between stakeholders.

Interim Management

Goal Statement: Manage part of your business on an interim basis, especially if it's undergoing significant strategic change

Change creates winners and losers. Sometimes, as a result of this, organisations find themselves with a division which is both being established and/or undergoing significant change, and without a suitable long-term leader.

An interim manager can help such a division undergo that change, while the organisation searches for a permanent candidate.

Often the skills required to manage the division through that period of change are different from the skills the organisation is looking for in a leader to lead the division beyond them. And an interim manager can provide a convenient scapegoat for the pain of change once the desired end-state is reached.

Digital Disruption

Goal Statement: Understanding how digital and technology will change _everything_

Founder Chris originally graduated with an Honours degree in Information Systems, and spent the first 10 years of his career in various software development roles in financial services. He still maintains an interest in several technology projects.

As a result, we have a very well developed and practical understanding of how technology can and will change almost every process in business today, and is able to bring this understanding to bear in proposing powerful business strategies that work.

Technology

Goal Statement: Use technology to develop and execute business strategies more effectively and efficiently

We don't just help our clients to profit from digital disruption. We also use digital technologies, most particularly StratNavApp.com (https://www.StratNavApp.com), in our own work to develop strategies more effectively and efficiently using:

• industry best practice
• open standards
• collaboration

See also StratNavApp's StratML record (https://www.stratnavapp.com/StratML/Part3/b2440d3f-3a8e-4c1f-bd03-f6750272031a/Styled).