Stressing its urgency is a non-starter, because it isn’t.
There are dozens of more urgent “fires” every day in the business that will need attention.
In our own business, the daily rhythm of meetings, emails and conversations surfaces problems needing quick fixes that can often feel like the only priority.
Framing the case for strategy is probably best when it’s about the opportunities that are either being lost or not presenting themselves.
You know your offering is good but it’s not showing up in your pipeline.
That can be seen as a trend line that shows your new business opportunities and leads are coming more and more from referrals. That’s a positive thing – it tells you you’re doing something special for your customers. However, it also speaks to the fact that your brand is not working hard enough in your marketplace to cut through and bring in prospects from outside your customer base. That’s a huge opportunity being missed and one that can be addressed with the right investment and plan.
Another obvious way that a lack of strategy shows up is when leadership and the team can feel the paralysis of having too many priorities. It pulls focus continually and means that energy and resource are spread too thin across too many areas of focus.
Nothing really gets done because too much needs to be done.
For one of our clients, the lack of prioritisation meant that “everyone was a customer” i.e. there was no clear-eyed view of who was a target audience and more importantly who was not.
By mapping out the whole market, it was then possible to select the smaller number of audiences that were best fit for our client’s proposition, and who would importantly offer the best return on investment.
That clarity then allowed the client to target audiences with a more distinct proposition to fit their needs and identify the products in their portfolio that were best fit with each audience. Rather than an inefficient one-to-many approach, this more focused strategy allowed for more effective and efficient allocation of resources and ultimately a more distinctive positioning that is audience-led rather than product-led.
An unclear strategy or lack of one can also bring that palpable feeling of wasted time and effort when people aren’t aligned.
Your people are not on the same page and they’re not pulling in the same way.
We’ve experienced this working with a client, where a mix of factors such as people based in headquarters versus satellite offices and those working on client sites, teams working within sub-brands, as well as those in different departments and a mix of longstanding employees versus newly joined employees or graduates all combined to create confusion and misalignment.
There was no shared understanding of what the organisation’s purpose, vision and values were, so the customer experience was inconsistent at best, damaging at worst.
Getting to the reality - particularly one that is informed by customers and stakeholders - and finding the common ground is a key first step. With that comes a strategy that gives people purpose, clear expectations in terms of behaviours and a vision that has a story that creates alignment.
Our own research tells us that there is a gap between the boardroom and the rest of the organisation on strategy in terms of vision and values; 91% and 88% of senior executives get the vision and values respectively versus 65% and 60% of entry-level employees.
This illustrates the importance of taking a holistic approach to strategy; including employees, customers and stakeholders and bringing them on the journey with a story that motivates and a cadence of activity that drives momentum.
Strategy should feel like a clear path forward.
It’s not the work needed to walk the path, but it’s the feeling that comes from knowing where you want to go and what it looks like to get there.
To help you find your next step forward, get in touch.
