How can a multinational company work on just a single strategy?

“If you don’t have a strategy, any path will take you where you want to.”

We already know the importance of strategy and its impact on the success of a company. A company would head nowhere without a clearly defined strategy – after all, chance encounters can only happen so many times!

For a firm to move towards success, not only does it need to have an end goal in mind but also a fool proof plan of hot to get there. This, as the article suggested, consists of clearly defined and elaborate objective, scope and advantage. However, I do believe that this elaborate strategy – especially for a larger organization – also needs to be easily decomposable.

A fairly smaller company is much more closely knit than larger ones. Successful startups have been formed and carried forward by merely a bunch a people but they could lead the firm to success as they all shared and immensely believed in their game plan. They all shared the same vision.

Practically speaking, attaining and expecting the same commitment towards a shared vision can get trickier as the company grows in size. Staff at every level of the company might keep shuffling and after a point, it gets a lot harder to keep track of whether the entirety of the firm still is working in line with the strategy laid out by the founders.

For this reason, I believe that any strategy laid, however grand and elaborate it may be- needs to be decomposable into portions. Portions, such that, each department has a certain set of immediate short term and long term goals to work towards. Portions, such that, every stakeholder in the firm has a clearly defined idea of what his role is towards the attainment of his or her departments goals. It is thus easier to stick to a short term strategy that you feel a part of than a long term one which was supposedly created by the founders at some point in time. Breaking the strategy down into these elements can thus help people relate to it better. The elaborate, all-encompassing strategy should and must off course be known to everyone in the company. But it is a lot more pleasant when you know exactly what you are working towards and can celebrate smaller wins along the way.

Hence being decomposable, I believe, becomes an essential part of any strategy developed for the company.

Additionally, in keeping with the year on year market trends and activity, a strategy, however fool proof it may be, needs to have some room for updates and iterations. Founders need to keep a check on how their formulated strategy is panning out in the market and be able to adjust accordingly.

It is for these reasons that decomposability and room for improvement are two of the important aspects that a company needs to incorporate in its strategy!