Who Should Own a Company’s Business Strategy?
…or, shall we begin with ‘Who all need to know your company’s business strategy and why?’? This should be simple and straight I suppose. The shop floor worker, retail salesperson, programmer, line manager, regional leadership, country head, HR business partner, recruitment team; investors, customer execs, supplier teams, hiring agency — you get it! Everyone that a company engages with, internally and externally, and whose interactions with your company is tangibly impacted should know the company’s business strategy.
In the past when flying was a necessity, I had to plan several details such as whether it was direct flight or with 1–2 stops, flying duration, seating format, luggage allowance, cancellation fees; even account for flight cancellation, etc. Choosing the correct flight also depended upon road time from home to ‘From’ airport in my city and the road time from ‘To’ airport to my destination. In my travel strategy, ‘Choosing the Optimum Flight’ was a critical strategic priority. Thank god that all airlines communicate relevant details beforehand! Imagine figuring things out directly at the airport!
From the airlines’ perspective, ‘Efficient Fleet Management’ is one of the critical priorities of their business strategy. It helps them manage and optimize their operating costs. And, efficiently managing their fleet is a key element of their other strategic priority — ‘Increase Customer Satisfaction’. Towards this effect, airlines choose to communicate certain aspects of their strategies with me — flight details — those that are critical for me to plan and execute my travel strategy. In addition, airlines need to communicate the same to other stakeholders — pilot, crew, ground staff, ATC, agents, etc. Due to the strong interplay between various stakeholders in an ecosystem, each one needs to know aspects of the others’ strategies. What varies in every situation is the amount of information. For example, knowing that the plane is refueling while I am still sipping my coffee outside the boarding gate is enough for me to know that we won’t go dry mid-air. I couldn’t be concerned with the volume of fuel.
So, we just saw who all need to know a company’s business strategy and why. While various org units execute their respective strategies with their respective org structures and the roles and responsibilities of their staff, all of them must operate in coherence with one another. This is obvious, you say. What is crucial is to conceptualize and design a framework that brings them together to operate in certain ways. Because when they do that, the company marches ahead unified to achieve their common goals.
Creating shared vision, formulating the company-wide and individual org unit strategy to achieve business goals, building strategic priorities to execute — for each org unit and common, communicating the strategy with all impacted stakeholders, planning the execution of these priorities by aligning the interplay between them, monitoring the progress and delivering common org-wide special projects are some of the core aspects of owing a company’s business strategy. Designing and delivering several new programs with multi-functional teams that fall in common ground is also vital — operations, sales, marketing, HR, L&D, customer services, etc. Each of these teams must know their company’s vision and strategy and its impact on their operations, roles and responsibilities. With every org unit focusing to deliver their respective priorities and KPIs, there should be a central unit in the executive leadership team that conceptualizes and designs this framework, oversees and manifests inter-departmental collaboration and leads many of the org-wise strategic programs. Given the substantial effort this involves, CEOs and business unit heads must consider committing a Strategy Office in their leadership structure as a strategic investment.
Owning a company’s business strategy entails the following. You can also read the other article I wrote recently — What is the Purpose of a Company’s Business Strategy?
1. Shaping the vision and defining business goals
2. Formulating the business strategy
3. Formalizing strategic priorities
4. Communicating the strategy to all impacted stakeholders
5. Partnering with business groups to execute
6. Delivering change initiatives
7. Measuring and tracking progress
Owning the company’s business strategy comes with responsibilities that pivot more towards its execution. This necessitates coordination between various org units and corporate functions, employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and all other impacted stakeholders. With the above constituents as its charter, the Strategy Office owns a company’s business strategy.
What else do you recommend as a the charter of a Strategy Office?
