The Blueprint for Success: Writing a Comprehensive 'Strategy' deck for your Product, Org, AI, or Data.
Whether its for your Enterprise, your Start-Up, or Small Business, the ability to write an eloquent strategy is an essential skill set that can't be skipped. So what does a strategy deck look like?!?
Writing a strategy deck that articulates your vision, mission, and direction is not difficult to do. What makes it difficult is:
Making sure its comprehensive, you’ve incorporated all the key elements that are table stakes.
It’s clearly written so investors, customers, or readers know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re heading as a company and/or team.
Making sure your format strikes the write balance between text, images, and stats so each slide is not a run-on of the slide before.
Your narrative flows sequentially
So how do you start? Where do you begin? What needs to be considered? I've consolidated and created a ‘Strategy Essentials List" for you below. It can be applied to your Product Strategy, Company Strategy, AI Strategy, or Data Strategy. See all 14 components needed in order to make your strategy complete. I’ve also put it in a sequential flow that makes sense (taking the guess work out for you). Don’t skip any of these.
Summary: Open up with a brief overview of your strategy, emphasizing its alignment with the company's strategic objectives and potential impact on competitiveness and innovation.
Team: Outline who’s on the leadership team, the advisory board, and anyone else that brings credibility to team. Don’t forget to include prior roles, awards, and achievements.
Business Objectives Alignment: Outline how the strategy aligns with broader business goals and objectives and any outcomes, outputs, and expectations that intend to position you in a unique way.
Market & Competitive Analysis: Provide an overview of market trends and how competitors are playing in your landscape. Show case you’re aware of your surroundings, competition, and the ecosystem at large.
Gaps and Opportunities: Outline what you feel are current gaps and opportunities to catch-up, stay ahead, or maintain your positioning in the market place.
Capabilities, Use Cases and Developments: Outline the capabilities, use cases, or developments happening in your industry, organization, or across teams and why its relevant for you. What do you need to do and why do you need to consider making the investments.
Technology and Data Infrastructure Needs: In a simple way, articulate the current state of the company’s data and technology infrastructure, potential investments needed (e.g., cloud computing, data analytics platforms, etc) and what the desired output would look like and how it advances you forward.
Talent and Skills Requirements: Outline a plan for your talent development, acquisition, and partnerships to build out the capabilities outlined above.
Ethics & Governance: What key considerations are needed with policies and protocols? What governance structures need to be explored? What regulations and compliance standards need to be taken into consideration?
Roadmap: Provide a timeline, with milestones, and a phased approach that enables short-term wins and long-term initiatives.
Anticipated Investment and ROI: Estimated budget and resources required to get the job done.
Risks and Mitigation Strategies: Outline potential risks and how you plan to mitigate them. Show them you’ve thought through all the implications.
Case Studies and Benchmarks: Examples always resonate, so share use cases, studies, benchmarks, and statistics, within your industry or similar industries. Any lessons learned and best practices would also help.
Call to Action and Next Steps: End it with a CTA and/or next steps. Make sure they leave knowing what exactly they need to do, and what you’re asking on them. Leave nothing to assumptions or guess work.
At a minimum, have a slide for each of the 14 topics for your strategy and review the deck with someone who is not close to your work. If they get it, others will too!
If you need ME to proof read your strategy or need further help, feel free to book 15 min or 30 min with me. https://intro.co/solrashidi
Such valuable, concise advice! I've found a strategy deck is essential to get everyone aligned and set expectations.
Seeing risks and mitigations in this list warms my heart so much. Thank you for consistently guiding our community with your thorough and intelligent practices!