At its simplest, strategy is a bridge that helps you get from where you are today to where you want to be. Whether in business or in your personal life, strategy is how you plan to achieve what you want from your current position. Bridges provide passage across the gap – something that is missing. For many of us, there are gaps in our lives – things that are missing and that we would like to have more of, such as more time with family and friends, more purposeful work, better health lifestyle and higher spirituality. Strategy can help us fill these gaps.
Bridges can also span obstacles. Think about the obstacles, difficulties, and adversities you’ve faced—difficult coworkers, finances at work, a weakening relationship with your children, high cholesterol, etc. Strategies can help us navigate and overcome these obstacles.
Think about where you are today. do you like your job? Is your mind active and focused? Are you in good health? Is your financial situation solid? Are your relationships inspiring and supportive? Now think about the bridge that led you to where you are now. Is it carefully planned and well thought out, or is it more akin to Alaska’s infamous Gravina Island Bridge, often referred to as the $398 million “Bridge to Nowhere”?
The average working adult spends about fifty hours a week working and commuting. Multiply those 50 hours by 50 weeks, and you’ve got 2,500 hours a year that could be wasted in a role that’s unsatisfying, unpleasant, or both. Over the course of a career, that’s over 100,000 hours!
We all have varying degrees of resources, including time, talent, and money. How we use these resources every day determines our level of happiness and success in four areas: mind, body, relationships, and finances. Are you investing your time in activities that keep your mind active? Are you applying your talents to worthwhile work? Are you investing yourself in relationships that strengthen your family, friends, and colleagues?
A Gallup survey confirms how common a lack of personal strategy has become. Gallup found after surveying its database of 1.7 million employees that Only 20% believe their job matches their strengths. That is, only 2 in 10 people believe they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day. If we don’t have a plan to match our passions and strengths with our professional and personal lives, then we can only sadly watch our days slip away like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Strategy can save us.
In the business world, strategy can make or break a company. Research by Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui shows that the number one cause of bankruptcy is poor strategy. Companies of all types and sizes are closing because they don’t have a plan for success—especially during an economic downturn. If you don’t have a strategic plan today, you may not have a business tomorrow.
The same goes for individuals. sports illustrated reported that 60% of professional basketball players Although they earn millions of dollars a year while holding this job, they are in serious financial trouble within five years of retirement. According to Yahoo! In the sports world, Scottie Pippen, named one of the top 50 players in NBA history, lost $120 million in career earnings in bad investments. The sobering fact remains that if you don’t have a strategy, you probably don’t have a future—at least not the future you want.
My study of 2,257 adults of all ages found that only 15% had a written life plan outlining their goals and strategies for achieving them. Based on this representative sample, we can conclude that less than 2 in 10 Americans have a plan for their lives.
I conducted a second study involving more than three hundred Fortune 1000 executives to see whether the practice of developing strategic plans for their businesses carried over into their personal lives. When asked, “Does your business have a written strategic plan?” 82% of senior executives answered “yes.” However, when asked “Do you have a written strategic plan for your life?”, only 22% answered “yes”.
Data shows that organizations without a sound strategy go bankrupt. In the long run, they will fail. Despite overwhelming evidence that businesses need a strong strategic plan to survive, until now, most people who work in business have not applied these principles of successful strategy to their personal lives. Why? No one showed them how to do it.
I’ve developed a five-step plan designed to use the fundamental principles of business strategy to create your bridge to the life you want. The five steps are as follows:
1. Discover: Discover your purpose through insight.
2. Distinguish: Identify your unique strengths.
3. Decide: Allocate your resources.
4. Design: Develop your action plan.
5. Driving: Execute your plan.
For a more in-depth look at this process, check out this book, A strategy that works for you.
As you move from one point in life to the next, you choose your destination and build your bridges. Without a strategy or a bridge, you have no clear way to get where you want to go. Without a strategy, you risk falling into gaps and being held back by obstacles. Without a strategy, you can’t create the life you want. With strategy, your bridge will take you far. Strategy is the power to get from where you are to where you want to be, the power to live strategically. You have that power. The question is: will you choose to use it this year?
