Define your strategy in a palpable way

Tell you a secret, when you ask the CEOs to describle their company’s strategy in less than 35 words, most probably they will get stumbled. If you raise the question to their employees, most of them will have no clue to answer it. Although strategy might be the most frequently used word in the buisness sphere, it also might be the most obscure concept to be communicated.

To put one organization in a nutshell, we see the hierchies like the following:

Mission: Why we exist.
Vision: What we want to be.
Value: What we believe in and how things are done here.
Then Strategy.

Mission and vision of the company can be very broad concepts and not specific. However, most of the companies fall into the trap to define their strategy in the same manner, like we want to privide xxxx in a cost-efficient way to add value for our customer. This kind of out-of-touch strategy could stand for anybody, so what is good for?

A good strategy should be articulated in a manner that every employee understands it, aligns with it and acts on it. In essence, a strategy should have three critical components, objective, sope and advantage.

Objective

Objective gives a direction and a goal to realize. It must be specific, measurable and in a time frame. Like We would be the market leader of ABC before year 2015 with market share over 40%.
An unclearly defined objective will lose people’s attention and focus, not mention the sense of urgency.

Scope

In what region and in what area, vertically and horizontally speaking, the business should compete and grow. No company can excel in every business and with a clearly stated scope, every employees knows what business should take and what shouldn’t. So the company’s resource can be concentrated on the core business and set on the right path toward to the objective.

Advantage

Advange is the company’s distinct (distinct here means something you do differently. I truly disbelieve the copy of buisness model because any built-in model in a business has thousands of factors at the back to buttress it) strenth to propel and grow its business. This is the power of the company can wield to thrive in the market and fend off competitors. It is something no one can do better than you and something you can always count on to hit your objective.
If employees are likened to a handful of pins, when you throw them on one paper, the pins will point to different direction. But if you place a magnet near them, magically all the pin will point toward the same direction. That is also a clearly defined strategy would do. CEOs should wear a elevator strategy statement in their sleeves and communite it rentlessly to the employees. When this is done, the success is just around the corner.