By now you and the team have got clarity and hopefully alignment around the questions:
- Why do we exist – Our purpose
- How we behave - Core values
- Where are you going – Vision
- What do we do and what don’t we do. Our bullseye
The next question for you and your team to answer is – How will we succeed?
Landing on the answer to this question can be tough but doing this grounding work will pay dividends.
Strategic Anchors are found in the core strengths or truths of a business that allow it to meet customers’ needs better than their competitor.
“A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. A business must deliver greater value to customers or create comparable value at a lower cost or do both” Michael Porter.
Strategic anchors provide a clear and coherent set of principles that guide a business’s strategic choices and decisions. This is the real guts of a strategy for success and guides the choices made and actions pursued.
Questions to ask to help uncover your Strategic Anchors
- What have been your inherent sources of success to date?
- What are your unique strengths (SWT)?
- What do customers value about you?
- What makes you unique and valuable?
- What do you do that your competitors don’t do?
- Why do you win?
You will want to arrive at no more than 3 anchors.
Quality check
- Does the anchor(s) leverage your strengths and passions?
- Anchors are NOT goals - you must actually be able to make them happen
- Are they pragmatic and clear?
- Are they coherent?
- Do they work together to give guidance for good decision-making?
- Are they unique to your business?
- No competitor should share all 3
- Is at least 1 or more of your anchors difficult for a competitor to replicate?
- Is it valued by your target customers?
Examples
Here are some examples of strategic anchors
- Lowest price in the market
- Individualized service
- We only use local suppliers
- Provide high quality at an affordable price
- Minimize impact on the environment through our production
Interesting resources
Episode #19: "Making Strategy Simple" | At the Table with Patrick Lencioni - YouTube
Book - The Advantage - Patrick Lencioni
Quarterly Strategy Meeting: Set Quarterly Objectives