Forget finding a strategy for a certain type of business or following somebody else’s strategy. It won’t work. Strategy has to be unique, tailored to your business. You have your own identity, including strengths, weaknesses, goals, core competencies. You have to develop your strategy, for your company.

This should be obvious, but some people still try to find the strategy for a restaurant, or a management consultant, or whatever.

Nobody talked much about business models until suddenly a lot of businesses, valued for a lot of money, didn’t have them.

For almost any traditional business, the business model is so obvious that you don’t have to talk about it. Stores sell goods. Restaurants sell meals. Hotels sell lodging. Airlines and taxis sell transportation.

Think of the business model as how you make money – how you get money out of your customer’s pocket and into your bank account.

The new businesses, mainly Web businesses, need to explain how they make money. Some of the most highly valued businesses in the world — Facebook, for example — don’t have an obvious way to make money.

Some businesses still get away with generating traffic, so-called eyeballs, but not money. The underlying assumption in these cases is that the traffic means a likelihood of being able to generate money somehow, some day.

And if you want to be really trendy, use the phrase business model to mean type of business. This can get really interesting. Take a look at Alexander Osterwald’s Business Model Design and Innovation, for example, a blog focusing on new ways to do business. Here’s how he defines the business model:

A business model is a conceptual tool that contains a set of elements and their relationships and allows expressing the business logic of a specific firm. It is a description of the value a company offers to one or several segments of customers and of the architecture of the firm and its network of partners for creating, marketing, and delivering this value and relationship capital, to generate profitable and sustainable revenue streams.

Along with that he adds nine points:

1. The value proposition of what is offered to the market;
2. The target customer segments addressed by the value proposition;
3. The communication and distribution channels to reach customers and offer the value proposition;
4. The relationships established with customers;
5. The core capabilities needed to make the business model possible;
6. The configuration of activities to implement the business model;
7. The partners and their motivations of coming together to make a business model happen;
8. The revenue streams generated by the business model constituting the revenue model;
9. The cost structure resulting of the business model.

This is perhaps a bit thick in language, but still, a nice summary of a business. You could use this as the heart of a plan too, no? His value proposition is our business offering, his target customer segment is obvious, but our strategy adds more attention to your business identity and your narrowed strategic focus. This is descriptive. Regardless, it’s a good list.

I want you to use words and numbers written down somewhere to keep track of your plan, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there unless you have it written into a text. It is there if you know it and if your team knows it.

Don’t get freaked out by the text, or the writing. It’s just for you, and probably your team members, to track your progress. Just type snippets. Stream of consciousness is fine. Pictures, photos, or charts are fine, too. Some of my favorite plans use illustrations or pictures to represent the key concepts for the heart of the plan; they can be as simple as a single slide.

Sometimes it’s as simple as a mantra. Fine dining in Eugene, Oregon. Fresh organic Korean food in lower Manhattan. Your weekend cottage in Cape Cod. Healthy fast foods.

You might be writing bullet points. Whether short text or picture or completely written out discussions, you want to keep track of your plan so you can track or your plan so you can review and revise it and, of course, communicate between different people. But until you need to present it as a document to be read by others, don’t make extra work. Keep it simple.

I do recommend keeping it on a computer, making it accessible to the few key team members who must be able to refer to it, but do only what you need.

Don’t ever get caught worrying about the actual writing. Just type snippets. Steam of consciousness is fine. Pictures or photos or charts are fine.

It is paradoxical. If you stay focused on the key elements of your business, you aren’t looking at new opportunities. That’s one of the reasons that strategy is done by humans, and not by recipes or algorithms. It takes a human to deal with the paradox and complexity.

Business strategy often involves tough decisions. Do you focus on what you know well, and consolidate, build on your core competencies? What if the market changes or technology changes and leaves you behind? But if you constantly move into new areas, constantly pursue new opportunities, you run into the problems of displacement and long-term consistency.

Deal with it. That’s why you are in charge. You make the tough decisions.