Whether or not you have built a strong strategy is often not apparent until you have accumulated a few years of successful achievement of short-term goals. Why is that? The groundwork done in creating strategy results in the setting of long-term visionary goals. These goals are often lofty, even audacious. Without breaking them down into successive short-term goals you don’t stand a chance of getting there. These short-term time intervals are called “strategy windows.” It is the cumulative successes of three or four strategy windows that provide validation of your strategic thinking. (At least until fundamental assumptions about your customers and their needs change.) The key to this short-term success is the identification of the right priorities that will ensure those goals are met. Read on for more information. Even if you don’t have a strong strategy in place, going through the strategy window goals and priority setting process will give you critical insight into what it could or should be.

Let’s talk about the critical connection between strategy and priorities. Normally, strategy is crystallized by a business strategy statement. Thought leaders in the business world consider this an overarching summary of what a business is, what it does, who it does that for, and, in a general way, how the business does all that. Put into plain view, a strategy statement consists of three things:

Now, let’s talk about priorities. These come about when the following things have happened: