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purposeful orientation |
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Purpose
Organizations with a purposeful orientation have a clear sense of why they exist and what sort of destiny they believe defines them. Claiming market dominance as a purpose is impossibly abstract, though it is commonly assumed to be the definitive statement, and it usually drives companies into making random acquisitions and assuming unmanageable debt. Others attempt to relegate purpose to stale "mission statements" with which to dress up annual reports.
A clear sense (and understanding) of purpose captures what is or should be excellent about an organization. Healthcare presents a convenient and uniform example in that most organizations share the common purpose of providing the best possible care at the least possible cost to achieve the highest probability of expected outcome. Plenty of nuance and variation exists, but the essence is consistent. Other markets and businesses can orient differently, but an understanding of what makes an organization excellent is common to those with purpose.
| Questions: |
- What are you good at?
- What are you best at?
- By what standard are you better than the competition?
- Who is your customer?
- What is the optimal future state?
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toward value |
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Value
Value describes the fundamental improvement in the customer's equation of need that the business aims to satisfy in ways that support strong brand identity as well as persistent customer loyalty. Value is always the strongest leverage an organization has. Matters of share price are transient and based on perception of the probability of an immediate or predictable short-term financial gain. Value forms the basis of long-term performance, and organizational clarity about its elements helps define where the most important paths of action will be.
| Questions: |
- What is the customer's equation of need?
- What are the economics of it?
- How do customers express their strategy?
- How aligned are your interests?
- Is satisfaction measured consistently and objectively?
- What do the measures say?
- How have results changed over the last 3-5 years.
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in the face of resistance |
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Resistance
Every organization operates in an environment of constraints and external pressures all of which form a climate of resistance to progress. Constraints can be current organizational, financial, product, or technical limitations. Competitors, market conditions, or regulatory matters can create pressure.
Identifying and quantifying the impact of matters known to slow or form a barrier to progress helps reduce or eliminate any mystery about the sort of effort required to execute a strategy. Gap or SWOT analysis and force-field evaluations are a couple of the popular variations used to uncover strategic necessities. As is the case with other methodological steps, using techniques that quantify critical factors helps establish a reasonably objective basis for measuring progress.
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- What is constraining movement or progress—what's holding the organization back?
- What is impeding movement or progress—what's standing in the way?
- What actions will have what effect at what cost?
- To what extent can resistance be turned to advantage or used against itself?
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producing measurable results or benefits |
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Results
If it's not measurable, it's not meaningful. Feeling good about progress is simply not enough. Evidence-based management uses the necessary data at the appropriate level of detail to support any optimistic and energetic agenda. From a practical point of view, a strategy that does not change at least one parameter of the business will probably not succeed. For example, expecting that sales will double with the same resources, product, and market is managing by figment—it takes more than pure will to affect change or progress. A variation on this would be changing a dependent parameter for no reason; for example, more people can do more work, but hiring more people without having more work doesn't make sense.
Any strategic program is ultimately defined by how well it performs against expected measures, which can provide guidance about changes in direction, application of resources, even rethinking some elements.
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- From what baselines will we measure progress?
- How much will it cost to execute this strategy?
- What is the nature and rate of expected return?
- What is the contingency if results deviate from expectations?
- Is the organization committed to fact-based management and results?
- How quickly are calculators in use during meetings?
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If developing a sustainable strategy with appropriately strong operational support appears important to your business or seems like the next logical move, we can help you take that major step. |
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Read More . . .
Beyond the nourishing habit of wide reading, paging through some of the suggestions below may offer some useful background on current thinking. Drop us a note if you have suggestions for recommended reading.
- Boris Yavitz and William Newman, Strategy in Action
- John Pearce and Richard Robinson, Strategic Management
- Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy
- George Steiner, Strategic Planning
- Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning
- Kenneth Andrews, The Concept of Corporate Strategy
- Michael Porter, Competitive Strategy
- Benjamin Tregoe and John Zimmerman, Top Management Strategy
- Michel Robert, Strategy Pure & Simple
- Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders
- Chester W. Richards, Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business
- Matthew Stewart, The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong
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