All of the good businessmen know the importance of strategy in the business but having a strategy does not mean it is working. Is your strategy, getting you where you want to go, and figure out how to fix it if it is not, even to the point of changing it entirely. This questioning process should not be a wide-scale, bottom-up event. Strategy is the job of the CEO or the unit leader, along with his or her direct reports. If the culture is healthy, they can see the organization in all its various, interdependent parts. People are sources of ideas and innovation, and can determine where the most exciting opportunities lie. Test your strategy and make alternate changes if required. Ask yourself the following questions and analyze yourself:

COMPETITION
1. Who has what share, globally and in each market?
2. Do we fit in?
3. What are the characteristics of this business?
4. Is it commodity or high value or somewhere in between?
5. Is it long cycle or short?
6. Where is it on the growth curve?
7. What are the drivers of profitability?
8.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor?
9. How good are their products?
10. How much does each one spend on R&D?
11. How big is each sales force?
12. How performance-driven is each culture?
13. Who are this business’s main customers, and how do they buy?
14. Has anyone introduced game-changing new prod¬ucts, new technologies, or a new distribution channel?
15. Are there any new entrants, and what have they been up to in the past year?
16. What scares you most in the year ahead?
17. What are the threats to your product or services?

Most people answering this set of questions underestimate the power and capabilities of their competitors. Getting the right strategy means you have to assume your competitors are damn good, or at the very least as good as you are, and that they are moving just as fast or faster.

YOUR MOVE
1. What can you do to change the playing field is an acquisition, a new product, globalization?

2. What can you do to make customers stick to you more than ever before and more than to anyone else?

3. What innovations you can add which will add value to your product and make it one in the market?

4. What are the promotional concepts you can adopt to increase the sale of your product?

5. What internal and external policies you will have to reach the goal of your time period?

6. Is there any need to do changes to the present policies?

This is the moment to leap from analysis to action. You decide to launch the new product, make the acquisition, double the sales force, or invest in major new capacity. Your big idea is winning, or it needs to change. Even if you didn’t have a strategy before, this process should help you get one. But either way, you have only just begun.