Strategic and Enabling Priorities: Guiding Your Strategy to Success

Crafting a robust strategy is vital for any organization seeking to remain competitive and reach its long-term vision. Think of strategy as a journey—from your current state to a new, clearly defined future. That destination is captured in your Vision statement: inspiring, yet attainable. But a Vision alone isn’t enough. To remove ambiguity, it must be paired with measurable outcomes, known as the Level of Ambition—your GPS coordinates for success.

So how do you chart the course from here to there? The answer lies in clearly defined Strategic and Enabling Priorities.

Strategic Priorities: Choosing Where to Win

Strategic priorities are long-term objectives grounded in rigorous marketplace analysis. They reflect conscious decisions about where to grow and how to build resilience.

To define them, a company must analyze:

• Internal factors (its core strengths and weaknesses), and
• External factors (market opportunities and threats).

By aligning internal capabilities with external realities, businesses can identify clusters of opportunity that form the foundation of their strategic focus areas. These priorities represent deliberate choices about where the organization wants to compete—and how it aims to succeed.

Enabling Priorities: Building the Capability to Win

While strategic priorities define where and how a company competes, enabling priorities ensure the organization is equipped to deliver.

These cross-functional priorities address the systems, people, and structures needed to support strategic objectives. They answer the critical question:
“How must we transform ourselves to succeed?”

Three enabling levers are especially important:

• Systems: Do we have the digital tools and infrastructure we need?
• People: Do our teams have the skills, mindset, and capacity?
• Organization: Is our structure aligned with our goals?

These priorities are not tied to specific markets—they are transversal. They support every part of the business and unlock execution.

Bringing Priorities to Life: Aligning Words and Numbers

Each strategic priority should be described in clear, action-oriented language, such as:

“Achieve market leadership in Southeast Europe while entering two new European markets.”

But language alone can be vague. That’s why every strategic priority must be quantified with impact metrics—such as revenue growth, gross margin expansion, or cost efficiency. These metrics ensure each priority contributes meaningfully to the company’s Level of Ambition.

Enabling priorities also have metrics, though they are more internally focused. Common examples include:

• Cost savings
• Process improvements
• Talent development
• EBITDA enhancements

Sequencing: Strategic Comes First, Enabling Follows

Enabling priorities follow strategic priorities—not the other way around. Once a company has defined where it wants to compete and grow, it can identify what capabilities are required to get there. This ensures that investments in systems, people, and processes are aligned with strategic intent.

This sequencing is crucial. Organizations that rush into capability-building without clear strategic direction often waste resources or build solutions that don’t support business goals.

Strategy in Action (SiA): A Practical Guide to Prioritization

Want to learn how to define your strategic and enabling priorities?

COTRUGLI Business School is the official distributor of the Strategy in Action (SiA) program in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. SiA combines a powerful software platform, expert-led workshops, and targeted coaching to help organizations craft and implement more effective strategies.

The SiA platform simplifies complex strategic analysis. It enables users to:

• Visualize internal and external factors (SWOT)
• Cluster strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities
• Prioritize strategic directions based on data
• Align strategy with a shared Vision and Level of Ambition

This user-friendly tool helps teams move beyond abstract conversations and into practical, data-driven decision-making.

Conclusion: Make Strategy Clear, Coherent, and Actionable

Strategic and enabling priorities are the cornerstones of any effective strategy. They define what to pursue, what to build, and—just as importantly—what to say no to.

When aligned with a compelling Vision and a measurable Level of Ambition, these priorities provide clarity and direction. They empower organizations to move with purpose, respond to change, and build lasting competitive advantage.

Let your priorities be your compass. And let Strategy in Action guide your journey.

Unlock the full potential of your organization with SiA and transform your strategic execution! Learn more about our SiA Platform here.