Strategic Initiatives: Examples and Development

What is a Strategic Initiative?

A strategic initiative is a project or action that is carefully defined and designed to achieve your project objectives, helping to bring your strategy to fruition. A robust strategic initiative is:

• Clearly defined
• Measurable and supported by key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Crafted to meet team and organizational objectives

What is the Purpose of a Strategic Initiative?

In order to bring your strategy to fruition, you must decide on the outcomes you want to achieve and what winning means to you. It is also essential to identify the maneuvers or actions that will be required to achieve the intended outcomes.

Strategic leaders need to be proactive and prepare strategic initiatives before they are compelled to and before their competitors, rivals, or adversaries take action. They also need to create an array of actions and specific goals or targets that are mapped to each strategic initiative. These goals should be supported with specific measures of success or Key Performance Indicators designed to track progress. Each strategic initiative needs a corresponding plan of action that defines the specific tasks and steps as well as a specific completion date.

Examples of Strategic Initiatives

There is a wide range of strategic initiative examples across organization types, functions, markets, and people. A few samples of strategic initiatives are:

• Raise brand awareness with a social-media campaign
• Acquire or merge with a critical supplier of raw materials
• Launch a strategy to reduce outsourcing
• Open more customer-facing retail outlets
• Offer more products and services online
• Take active measures to become the preferred low-cost producer
• Implement an automated production system to reduce labor costs or increase quality
• Begin to aggressively develop leadership talent to support expansion plans
• Set out on a research effort to create the next generation of products

When put into practice, most strategic initiative examples require a team of diverse individuals with the right mix of talent and determination to achieve success and create a resilient organization. As we suggested earlier, some strategic initiatives need to be acted on now while others can be advanced on a longer timeline that better meets the needs and resources of the enterprise. Ultimately, successfully implementing a strategic initiative of any type will lead to greater value and benefits for the firm, its customers, its employees, and the community.

Types of Strategic Initiatives

There are many different types of strategic initiatives, actions, or undertakings. Below are a few of the common types of initiatives that businesses, departments, or individuals may consider:

Fix-and-Prune Initiatives

A fix-and-prune strategic initiative is an action designed to address an underlying problem or challenge that needs to be resolved or eliminated before you move on to larger actions that are more ambitious or innovative. Initiatives that are shorter term in nature and need to be implemented now often fall into the “fix-and-prune” category.

Build-and-Create Initiatives

“Build-and-create” initiatives are more advanced and groundbreaking, designed to create a marked change in what you do or how you do it. For example, you might decide to start a major expansion in the services you offer or the markets you serve. It could also involve expanding capacity or geographic reach. These initiatives are likely to be significant in scale and/or resource-intensive endeavors.

Offensive Initiatives

Some types of strategic initiatives are more “offensive” in nature: progressive, insightful, proactive, and innovative. These could lead to game-changing solutions, totally new offerings, or disruptive, breakthrough ideas that will produce competitive advantage for your enterprise and greater value for your customers.

Defensive Initiatives

Defensive strategy is more cautious in nature and designed to maintain your position in the marketplace or preserve your existing competitive advantages rather than create new ones.

Time-Based Initiatives

Other types of strategic initiatives are those that are accomplished over a longer period of time. They tend to be much more intensive, involved, or transformational in nature.  These long-term changes require significantly more resources, talent, and budget to complete. These wildly important strategic goals that have to be accomplished might be referred to as “transformational” or “moon shots.”

What’s the Difference Between Strategy and Strategic Initiatives?

Strategic initiatives define the strategy. In other words, strategic initiatives are the building blocks that help establish and solidify your strategy.

Let’s revisit the build-and-create initiative example above to explain further:

• The strategic initiative is expanding its offerings to include more variations of vehicles.
• The company’s strategy is one of adaptability. The business aims to set itself apart from competitors. As the company has solidified its reputation for creating attractive, economical, and comfortable sports cars, the team is capitalizing on this strength while adapting to consumer needs.

How Do You Develop a Strategic Initiative [with Examples]?

1. Determine Your Goal

Clearly articulate a goal. This goal should highlight a project or action.

For example:

• Increase revenue by 20% by the end of the quarter.
• Develop a next-generation product by leveraging R&D resources/partners.
• Merge critical raw materials providers.

2. Establish Milestones

Completion of milestones sets you up to productively work toward your goal.

For example:

If your goal is to increase revenue by 20%, some milestones may entail offering training on sales and networking strategies and having each sales team member onboard one new client or sell one additional product to an existing client.

3. Select Your Strategy

Selecting a specific strategy allows your team to move forward with your milestones to achieve your goal. More importantly, it helps all team members involved in the strategic initiative stay aligned throughout the process.

For example:

Your sales team may build a stronger inventory of tools and resources as they work through their milestones. These tools and resources are shared and accessible to all, so every individual has what they need to succeed and stay focused on the goal.

4. Secure Buy-In

Explain your plan to key stakeholders to receive additional support for your initiative. Shed light on the financial and practical benefits of your goal and strategic development initiatives.

For example:

In the case of the aforementioned sales objective, illustrating the competitive advantage in the marketplace could highlight the value your strategy goal and plan will deliver.

5. Monitor Progress

Report regular summaries of your tasks and completion of milestones. Assess your data and use those values to adjust your strategy. Share the data with key stakeholders to receive their insights as well.

Elevate Business Planning and Action with CMOE

Developing strategic initiatives requires careful thought and consideration. Professionals who take advantage of CMOE’s Strategy Development Processes and Services are equipped with the skills to focus on critical targets and construct an effective development framework.

Learn about this resource to help your team and business achieve long-term success.