What are Strategic Insights?
Strategic insights are deep understandings that significantly influence a business's strategy and decision-making. They are derived from in-depth analysis and understanding of various data sources and market conditions. They provide a deep understanding of internal and external factors that can impact an organisation's long-term goals and competitive positioning.
Here's a breakdown of what constitutes strategic insights:
- Market Trends: Understanding shifts in market dynamics, consumer behaviour, and industry trends. This includes recognising emerging opportunities and threats.
- Competitive Analysis: Insights into competitors' strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and market positioning. This helps in identifying gaps and opportunities for differentiation.
- Customer Insights: In-depth knowledge of customer needs, preferences, and pain points. This can drive product development, marketing strategies, and customer experience enhancements.
- Internal Capabilities: Assessment of an organisation's strengths and weaknesses, including resources, capabilities, processes, and culture. This helps in leveraging strengths and addressing weaknesses.
- Technological Advancements: Understanding how new technologies can impact the industry and business operations. This includes recognising opportunities for innovation and potential disruptions.
- Regulatory and Environmental Factors: Awareness of regulatory changes, environmental impacts, and compliance requirements that can affect business operations and strategy.
- Economic Conditions: Insights into macroeconomic factors such as economic growth, inflation, and employment rates that can influence business performance and strategic decisions.
Strategic insights are actionable and provide a foundation for informed decision-making. They enable organisations to anticipate changes, adapt strategies, and maintain a competitive edge. These insights often come from various sources, including
- market research,
- data analytics,
- industry reports,
- customer feedback, and
- internal performance data.
What do Strategic Insights look like?
Strategic insights typically include:
- a description of some observable phenomenon,
- a description of the impact this could have on the business on the environment in which it operates, and
- a qualification of the causal relationship between the observable phenomenon and the impact, expressing factors such as certainty and time (present or future),
- and supporting evidence.
For example, we might have a strategic insight which says that: "Advances in AI could lead customers to abandon traditional consulting in favour of AI-powered strategy development and execution platforms."
In this case:
- "Advances in AI" are an observable phenomenon,
- "Customers abandoning traditional consulting in favour of AI-powered strategy development and execution platforms" is an impact on the industry and/or business,
- "Could lead to" qualifies the causal relationship as future uncertain.
- Supporting evidence could include any data and analysis concerning relevant aspects of the development of AI or of the behaviour of clients, etc.
For more on the nature of strategic insights see: Are your strategic insights insightful?
Where do Strategic Insights appear in StratNavApp.com?
Strategic Insights are a core unit of analysis in StratNavApp.com. They typically appear:
- on the SWOT, McKinsey 7S, PESTEL and 5 Forces models
and/or - linked to other records in the system, such as Decisions, Strategic Goals, Strategic Initiatives, etc. on which they have a bearing.
What information can you provide about Insights?
For each Insight you can specify:
- Title: This is the name of your insight. It should typically include the observable phenomenon, the impact, and the qualification of the causal relationships between the two, as described above. For example, "Disastified customers could leave (something observable) eroding economies of scale in the business (the negative impact it could have on the organisation). Avoid vague statements like "Customer satisfaction" - what about it? Remember, the title itself should be insightful!
- Description/Evidence and Impact: This should include all the information necessary to fully understand the insight. For example: how is customer satisfaction measured, what are the current levels of customer satisfaction, how are they changing and why (the evidence)? And then, what is the relationship between customers leaving and economies of scale, and what implications will declining economies of scale have for the business (the impact)?
You can use our #stratBot AI to help you write the description for your Insights.
See also: Formatted text entry. - Scope: Is the root cause underlying the insight Internal - that is under the organisation's control, or External - that is not under the organisation's control?
- Impact: Is the impact positive or favourable, or negative or unfavourable for the organisation (if it does nothing different about it)?
Depending on what you say for Scope and Impact, you may then also be able to specify:
- Strength of impact: How big an impact could this insight have on the organisation? You can filter your SWOT analysis based on strength of impact.
- Certainty of impact: How certain are you about what is or could happen and/or about the impact that might have on the organisation?
- McKinsey 7S: Which McKinsey 7S category does this insight belong to? Leave as "select" if it does not belong on the McKinsey 7S model. This applied to insights with a Scope of Internal only.
- PESTEL: Which PESTEL category does this insight belong to? Leave as "select" if it does not belong on the PESTEL model. This applied to insights with a Scope of External only.
- 5 Forces: Which 5 Forces category does this insight belong to? Leave as "select" if it does not belong on the 5 Forces model. This applied to insights with a Scope of External only.
Linking Insights to other elements of your strategy
Part of the power of StratNavApp.com is its ability to link elements of your strategy together. This helps you understand your strategy as a holistic system. It also makes it easier to understand how changes in one area (such as changes in your environment) can impact other areas of your strategy.
Do Next: Outcomes and Scenarios
For external insights, you can then add outcomes and link these to scenarios. Adding multiple outcomes is particularly helpful where the level of Certainty of Impact is low because the certainty of what will happen is low. It is even more relevant if the impact of the outcome could be high.
For example, in anticipation of a tightly contested political election, the certainty of the outcome could be low. Either party could win. But the impact could be high if the different parties have vastly different policies which could significantly impact your industry or business.
See also: Working with Scenarios.
Do Next: Link to Processes and Products
If your insight relates to specific processes or products, you can link directly to them. Start typing the name of the product or process and select an existing one from the drop-down list or hit enter to create a new one.
Remember that links are created in both directions.
Do Next: Link to Goals or Initiatives
Your Strategic Goals and Initiatives should be driven by your Strategic Insights.
You can:
- link your existing Strategic Insights directly to the existing Strategic Goals and Initiatives they drive, or
- create new linked Strategic Goals or Initiatives directly from your Insights.
Do Next: Link to Meetings
You can link your Insights to any meetings at which they were discussed. This gives you a record of who discussed what, with whom, and when.
Do Next: Link to Actions
You can link your Insight to existing actions or create new actions directly from your Insights. Actions could be to conduct more analysis into the Insight, or to do something in response to it.
You can use our #stratBot AI to help you to plan actions to explore, validate or respond to your Insights.
Do Next: Link to Stakeholders
You can link your Insights to new or existing stakeholders (people, organisations or groups of people or organisations). Stakeholders can be involved in the analysis itself, or impacted by the insight.
Do Next: Link Files
Your insight could be drawn from a document like a research report. You can upload and link such files. You can also link to them on SharePoint. See Using the File Vault and SharePoint Integration.
