Our approach has been honed through strategic work with hundreds of companies.  Extensive industry experience enables us to skip the learning curve and provide actionable insight from day one.   Our proven methodology provides a predictable process, including a compact timeline and a fixed fee, while at the same time ensuring that the outcome is highly tailored to your company’s situation.  By using Partners to conduct all team meetings we provide expert facilitation with executive perspective.  

Strategy is about setting a clear course and aligning the entire organization behind it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It doesn’t have to be grandiose or complex, but it does have to be based on a sober assessment of your market position and organizational strengths. 

Most strategic plans fail for lack of execution.  In the IRCG process, implementation is not an afterthought – it is embedded directly into the plan.  Execution plans are developed by the people responsible for completing the tasks.  Objective, measurable success criteria (KPIs) are defined for each core initiative to ensure accountability.  Each task in every execution plan includes a concrete deliverable, single owner and firm due date.  The process is monitored by a closed feedback loop. 

The greatest benefit of strategic planning often occurs during the process of its development.  This is when the widest range of input should be solicited and when you draw on the creativity of every employee - especially those who interact regularly with customers.  This is when ownership and commitment are cemented. It is a unique opportunity to develop your company’s next generation of leaders.  

Strategic Framework 

IRCG’s proprietary strategy development process provides a powerful structure for our engagements.  It includes templates, examples and exercises.  The immediate output is a documented strategy that defines financial and market positioning objectives, creates detailed action plans to support these objectives and provides a foundation for ongoing execution and accountability.  The plan includes specific initiatives, measurable goals, activity ownership, a process for driving implementation and ongoing performance monitoring in the form of scorecard with results and activity measurements. 

The components of the strategic plan are depicted in the following diagram:

The Shareholder Vision is a simple statement of the company mission, values and financial objectives. It establishes the broad guidelines for the strategy, sets risk tolerance boundaries, and issues the corporate challenge to the management team.  It may also define acquisition and expansion objectives. 

Strategic Positioning addresses issues such as industry and channel evolution, competitive positioning, target markets and value propositions.  The Support Structure level identifies the internal changes required to achieve strategic objectives.  This may involve examination of core competencies and critical constraints to develop specific organizational elements such as roles and responsibilities for branch, regional and corporate management; measurement and control systems; employee development; succession planning, etc. 

Core Initiatives and Execution Plans implement changes in market positioning and structure.  These plans are developed deep within the organization to produce true ownership and provide a reality check. 

For more information about how our strategic planning process can help your organization, call us or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .