The importance of alignment for competitive advantage
As a sailor must adjust their course in response to changing conditions, businesses must continually adapt their strategies to maintain their competitive edge. Strategic planning is a critical ongoing process that documents a business's intended direction and aligns stakeholders and employees around common goals.
Members of Growth Innovation Strategy Group helped a multi-national corporation align their senior leadership team through a strategic planning process that included a strategy workshop. It was a difficult assignment, with many strong points of view and stronger personalities. By conducting a survey, interviewing senior stakeholders, and developing a strategic framework, we helped them achieve alignment that optimized spending, improved investor satisfaction, and preserved both regional autonomy and strategic alignment.
However, strategic planning is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process that requires continual reassessment and evolution. According to Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, 93% of successful businesses evolved and pivoted away from their original strategic plans.
By expanding your strategic planning capabilities, you can provide lasting value to your organization.
But how can you go about gaining alignment in senior leadership teams and achieving your strategic goals? Growth Innovation Strategy Group specializes in helping businesses do just that.
Our proprietary approach includes scanning your internal and external current state, identifying strengths, areas of improvement, and market opportunities. We use industry research and scenario analysis to identify and stress test future trends that will impact your strategy. This enables us to help you optimize operations, identify growth opportunities, and above all, maintain strategic alignment.
It's helpful to engage an outside consultant who can be efficient, impartial, and experienced. But it can be done by a senior leader.
Success depends on engaging your leadership team in the development of a shared picture of the business environment. We do it by conducting senior stakeholder interviews and survey analysis to surface critical issues, cost rationalization strategies, and areas where regional autonomy is critical. By presenting these findings to the senior team in a multi-day offsite workshop, we provide a strategic framework that allows alignment to top-down priorities and room for unique regional initiatives. Taken together, this helps the leadership team to unite around a common vision, mission, tasks, and responsibilities. Fostering team alignment ensures top-down priorities are met, while still allowing room to pursue unique opportunities.
We find this approach results in the adoption of a strategic framework, streamlining of the organization, and an increased shared sense of purpose. The outcome is a more competitive and focused organization that satisfies investors and provides regional autonomy for innovation.
Businesses looking to optimize spending, maintain strategic alignment, and develop the agility to respond to true opportunities should consider strategic planning.
In a rapidly changing business environment, being able to adapt and pivot is crucial to success. With a strategic plan in place, you can set a course for success. It's the kind of thing Growth Innovation Strategy Group loves to do, and can help with.
