Crafting a Result-Oriented Strategy Statement

According to the articles assigned for this week, many managers and business leaders have a hard time describing their strategy, making it hard for other employees and entrepreneurs working in the company to make good choices that match with the strategy. Collins and Rukstad say that a good way to do this is to define strategy as a simple, clear, and succinct statement that everyone can understand and internalize to use it when making their own department strategic choices. The authors recommend the strategy statement to be about 35-words long. They also emphasize on the need for the strategy to have a clear objective, with a well-defined end-point and time frame, the scope in which the strategy applies (customer type, service offered, geographic location…), and the strategy’s advantage, defining what your company will do differently than others offering the same services and how. After reading this article, I realized that only one of the companies I have ever worked for do this kind of statement, which may explain why I was so invested in my job as a fundraiser in the State Theater of NJ. Before I even took the job, I was told exactly what the company was hoping to accomplish. They said that their goal was to become more accessible to the community, and that they were going to accomplish that by renovating the theater, installing elevators and new sitting arrangements to welcome the elderly community and gain competitive advantage over their peers. They also set a time frame of 5 years and a precise amount they needed to raise. Hence, when I started working, I knew exactly what to do, what kind of donors to reach, and what kind of events to plan for next. In contrast, this summer, I worked the Cultural Trust as an education program manager, being responsible for multiple arts camps, half of which were pilots which I needed to evaluate. However, the Cultural Trust being so big and so wide in program offerings, I never understood where the company, and/or the education department was trying to accomplish with these programs. This made it difficult for me to find the right kind of evaluation for the programs I was in charge of piloting.

The article, “Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy”, expanded my insight about how to craft a good strategy and its statement. In this article, the writers give a great method for how to choose the right strategy for your company when facing an industry challenge or company issue. First, they recommend looking at the issues you are trying to solve as choices and possibilities to get ahead of the market. Looking at the issue with positivity seems like a great way to encourage teams to find good alternatives; something I will use as a manager in the future. I particularly liked the way that this article suggests companies to pick the strategy by first proposing multiple possibilities (one per team member), then analyzing each of these possibilities in the light of what things need to happen in order for that strategy to be successful, and finally, bringing in an outsider to help the company analyze, from less likely to most likely, which possibility is the safest strategy choice.

Finally, the last two articles point out a few tests and challenges that you will need to take into consideration to make your strategy statement successful. For instance, Horan and Connerty talk about making sure your team is invested in the strategy, by getting them involved, hearing their opinions on how to go about the strategy chosen. Bradley, Hirt, and Smit, discuss the importance of checking for bias in your strategy, making the strategy actionable, and balancing the commitment and flexibility of it. All these advices and methods helped me understand the complexity of crafting strategy and the importance of defining it so well that everyone in the company is motivated and in the same page. This is something that I will take with me to use when I get on my next managing position at a company.

References:

Bradley, C., Hirt, M., & Smit, S. (2011, January). Have you tested your strategy lately? McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/have-you-tested-your-strategy-lately

Collins, D. J., & Rukstad, M. G. (2008, April). Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? Harvard Business Review.

Hotsn, S., & Connerty, M. (2017, November 3). Good Strategy Execution Requires Balancing 4 Tensions. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/11/good-strategy-execution-requires-balancing-4-tensions

Lafley, A., Martin, R. L., Rivkin, J. W., & Siggelkow, N. (2012, September). Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy. Harvard Business Review.