Businesses across the Caribbean continue to grapple with the fallout from the dual impact of the pandemic: from the medical implications to the concurrent economic impacts. However, companies in the region had significant challenges with strategic navigation even before the covid19 pandemic. Business consultant Nichelle Granderson, who leads her own firm Strategy Plus (S+) Consulting, shared insights with Business Day on how businesses can find themselves on a better footing during and after this pandemic.
She has done consultancy for companies including Unicomer, iGovTT and the Caricom Secretariat ending more recently in her role as human resources director for the Eastern Caribbean for Digicel.
In her work over the past two decades, she noted that few Caribbean companies invest the needed time for strategy, pointing out, "If you don't know where you are going, all roads will take you there."
She detailed further, “Even companies that have created and are executing on strategy, are doing so having only used strategy 'tools' like SWOT, PESTLE and Logic models. Many companies have workshops or retreats after which strategic plans are rendered, but these are also done without formal training or proven methodologies." And she would know. Her work has covered local private and state-owned enterprises as well as regional and international ones.
[caption id="attachment_901174" align="alignnone" width="683"] Business strategy consultant Nichelle Granderson, head of Strategy Plus (S+) Consulting. Photo courtesy Nichelle Granderson -[/caption]
What can companies do
The traditional three- to five-year strategic plan may no longer be viable in the today’s world. The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to sound the siren that new coronavirus spreads are possible and hence, more pandemics and more unpredictability in business. Granderson advised that more than a pivot is needed.
"Organisational strategic goals, themes, and objectives must continuously be evaluated and re-evaluated and defined to take into consideration the absolute abstract situation we live in today. Initiatives in support of strategy must inspire true innovation and risk to recover lost streams of revenue but more importantly to develop new sustainable sources of income too," she advises.
According to her work within the global Balanced Scorecard Framework 9 Steps to Success, companies must consider:
1. Assessment – internal and external aspects as well as creating or re-validating strategic elements (vision, mission, values, stakeholder value proposition)
2. Strategy – high-level business strategies garnered from step one at the organisational level.
3. Objectives – objectives to deliver the business strategies developed in step two
4, Strategy map – communicates at a glance the direction of the business strategies
5, Measures and targets – to develop outcome and output performance measures for the strategic objectives on the enterprise map.
6, Strategic initiatives – identify critical projects to improve performance; deve
