Occasionally the management team will meet for some form of seminar or bosberaad to look at where the company should be going, often arranged by an outside agency. Such meetings will usually look at the core strategies of the company and consider questions like 'What should we be selling? To who? Why would they buy from us? Where to from here? What is our vision?' and other similar concepts.

However experience has shown that the average SME management team knows why the company is here, what its goals and objectives are, which products and services it sells or should sell, to what customer groups and understands its distribution channels and how to communicate with customers. And although these issues should be thought about from time to time, these are rarely significant problem or opportunity areas. This is perhaps why so many bosberade end up with much enthusiasm and motivation, only to sink without trace of effect in due course.

MarkStrat is different. In addition to reviewing core strategy issues in a very time efficient manner, MarkStrat allows the management team the opportunity to identify the key elements or drivers that will push the conversion of the core strategy to business transactions - in other words the key drivers of strategy implementation.

And then delegate responsibility and set the desired outcomes and time frames for improvement in these areas. So the program ends with tangible and significant business improvement - as well as all the euphoria of thinking strategy and teamwork.