Strategic Themes are the strategic focus areas of an organization. These themes are mostly linked to financial OR customer perspectives. As an analogy, these are the thrusters which an organization wants to deploy to achieve altitude.
Strategic business themes may not be standard for all organizations:
One may think that these must be typical standard/cliche themes, as every organization wants to have best customer, maximum revenue, maximum profit and so on. This is partially correct perception, but these themes do provide a direction and some boundaries for the strategy creation. Some choices of Strategic Themes for the organizations are:
- High Value & Profitable Customers vs. Maximize Customer Base
- Maximize value from existing customers vs. maximize new acquisitions
- Maximize the geographical width vs. Maximize the penetration.
- Some of these might sound as strategies (instead of a theme). The difference is that a theme is not SMART, whereas a business objective is.
Strategic business themes are shareholder and customer focused
All Strategic Themes are focused on the end outcome. While there are strategies associated with operational excellence, internal processes and stakeholders typically are not part of the themes. For example, you will not have a Strategic Theme of 'achieving capability to provide sharp turnaround response to provide an electricity connection'. Strategic Theme can be to ' Position as responsive deliverer', and a faster turnaround could be the means to achieve this theme.
Process of establishing the Strategic Business Themes:
The management team will review the SWOT and External and Internal information analysis. The Strategic Themes will be listed out, with an explanation on why and how they are able to address the SWOT analysis.
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