Setting your organization's strategy is one of the primary tasks of every executive, from the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies down to sole proprietors and small business owners.
Reading that, how do you feel? Excited?
Stressed?
Equipped?
Overwhelmed?
Setting and clarifying your org strategy can be one of the most exciting and invigorating exercises you go through.
But not if you overcomplicate it.
I was working with a client recently, an organization with great brand recognition and incredible mission and values that was experiencing a multi-year decline in revenue. They were struggling to identify where they were falling short and looking to innovation to solve their problems.
In actuality, their biggest problem was that their "strategy" was an Excel sheet with over 100 different line items.
Can you imagine being a staff member there and trying to execute on a strategy with 100 different priorities? It's impossible.
As a leader, it's your job to create a high level strategy that is so simple it can fit on a single page, and that is so clear, every member of your organization knows exactly what it is and how their job fits into it.
This will take time to get right, but in the end, your entire organization will benefit from the clarity.
How to get started?
Spend time up front identifying what it is that you're trying to accomplish. James Mattis, the retired 4 star Marine General, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation says that for leaders, strategy is 95% defining the problem. As an executive or business owner, the way you set priorities and define your strategy is like the lid to a puzzle box: You are casting a vision that lets everyone else in your organization see the final state and make empowered decisions within their roles as to how to get there.
And then what?
In the words of Pat Lencioni, "If you can get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you can dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
Ready for a conversation about strategy? Contact us right now.
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