The Strategy Checklist, Part 1: A Recipe for Running a Top-Notch Strategy Process

Let’s talk about strategic planning.

More specifically, the end-to-end process of developing and executing a compelling corporate strategy. Strategy is a process - from the highly personal, nebulous stage of defining a company’s values and vision, to the long-term planning stage of setting goals and priorities, to the unglamorous and overlooked stage of execution, coordination and results-tracking. And like every process, it has proven formulas, best practices and predictable flows that can be harnessed to develop winning strategies and deliver strong results.

This article is Part 1 of a two-part series. Here, I introduce The Strategy Checklist framework. And in Part 2, I delve into each of its steps to showcase its practical application.

Unicorn or Supernova: Can Instacart Sustain Its Meteoric Rise?

Let’s talk about Instacart.

More specifically, the soaring fortunes of the grocery delivery company, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the sustainability of Instacart’s growth and popularity – not to mention its ballooning valuation.

The Growth Cube: A Practical Framework for Engineering Business Model Expansion

Let’s talk about growth.

More specifically, a practical framework (The Growth Cube) for developing a comprehensive growth strategy along three capability dimensions most relevant to realizing the full potential of a company’s business model: product portfolio, geographic presence, and vertical segment penetration.

The Value Tree, Part 2: Using Shareholder Value to Unite and Prioritize the Corporate Portfolio of Strategic Initiatives

Let’s talk some more about shareholder value.

More specifically, applying The Value Tree strategic framework, which I adapted from the popular enterprise valuation formula, to identify, coordinate and prioritize initiatives and investments that create shareholder value.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I introduced the Value Tree framework (see Figure 1). And in this article, I delve into each element of the framework to demonstrate how it can be used by strategy professionals to organize corporate initiatives into a cohesive portfolio and assign them priority based on their quantifiable potential to create meaningful shareholder value.

  

The Value Tree, Part 1: A Corporate Strategy Framework Inspired by a Popular Valuation Technique

Let’s talk about shareholder value.

More specifically, a simple and practical strategic framework (The Value Tree) adapted from a popular enterprise valuation heuristic, which can be used to identify, coordinate and prioritize initiatives and investments that create shareholder value.

This article is Part 1 of a two-part series. Here, I introduce the Value Tree framework. And in Part 2, I delve into its elements to showcase its application. This series is not about valuation methodologies. Rather, it’s about adapting the simple valuation formula into a strategic framework that isolates the principal drivers of shareholder value, and using it to organize, prioritize and even quantify different strategic initiatives based on their potential to deliver measurable shareholder value growth. It’s a handy, and universally applicable, tool for strategy professionals to tie together the numerous, and often disconnected, corporate initiatives into a cohesive and coordinated portfolio. And tie everything back to (what should be) the number-one goal of every corporate executive: creating shareholder value.