Growth is fundamental in establishing the success of a business. For most of the for-profit companies this growth means increase in sales, introduction of new products and/or increase in market share. Whichever goals are set, companies need an elaborate plan that will guide them through.
An organisational strategy is such a detailed execution plan. It outlines actions that a business must take to achieve the intended growth. These actions stem from the company’s mission & its values. Along the way they ensure that the organisation fulfils its purpose.
The time frame for organisational strategy is long & thus the planned actions need constant review. These reviews help you make adjustments in the strategy to address business environment that is constantly in flux.
Developing a strategy takes significant amount of time and resources. But, there are many reasons why it’s imperative to create one for your business:
Set Priority and Direction
Creating an organisational strategy gives your business a sense of direction. Planned in advance actions act as stepping stones to achieve company objectives. With a clear road map, your team will know where to invest their efforts to achieve the desired results.
These planned actions define your business’s priorities. Thus teams experience fewer distractions, they know what they are focusing on already.
Each employee will focus on the set objectives sparing you from a management crisis.
Enhances Cooperation
Various departments in business work together to achieve different goals. Lack of unity breeds inefficiency resulting in poor service delivery and slow growth.
A good strategy unites all employees to a common goal, thus enhancing cooperation. Under a common goal, they are looking at the same north star rather than a fractured view of what success looks like.
Simplifies Decision Making
An organifational strategy serves as a reference point for decision-making. As such, all decisions made are in line with the business objectives.
Making crucial decisions like resource allocation is easy for businesses with a well documented organisational strategy. Remember, strategic planning helps set priorities. Also, it enables you to identify the department that deserves the allocation of more resources.
The number of decisions reduces since you only focus on those tied to your goals.
Allows Your Business to Adapt
Although your business goals remain the same, your vision may change along the way. For this, you need to change your operations to achieve the outlined goals. Besides, it’s common for revolutionary technologies to spring-up in a short period.
With an organisational strategy, you can change your operations without compromising your goals. As such, your business adapts to the changes, giving it a competitive edge.
Organisational strategies come with several benefits. Let’s look at a few types of strategies.
Types of Organisational Strategies
● Corporate level strategy
Corporate strategy involves the senior management of a diversified company. The plan focuses on how the small business-units complement each other. A portfolio approach to decision making across all units will help you achieve it.
The strategy ensures the parent company has an appropriate organizational structure and systems. This guarantees efficient optimization of human capital, processes, and governance.
● Business level strategy
A business-level strategy seeks to achieve customer satisfaction. It is possible through exploiting the service market and core competencies in products. With customer satisfaction, revenue is bound to increase.
The strategy also details the actions required to gain a competitive advantage. There are 3 sub-strategies used in establishing a competitive edge. These are; cost leadership, differentiation, and market segmentation.
- Cost leadership: It involves standardization of product costs in comparison to a competitor’s price. Your products become affordable to customers, establishing the company as a cost leader.
- Differentiation: It aims at providing 10x more value to customers than the nearest competition. Providing high quality products with unique features will come in handy.
- Market segmentation: It is a base for a competition that depends on the market size. Businesses will focus on selling their products to a small segment of the market. This strategy minimizes competition as well as production and overhead costs.
● Functional level Strategy
Think of functional strategies as actions geared towards supporting other level strategies. These actions are assigned to departments with a specification of daily operation goals.
The department managers assign different goals for each employee. This is useful in the realization of the departmental objectives and the company’s goals.
To achieve the set goals, your business has to execute the strategy with efficiency. Here’s how to stick and put in place your strategy with success:
Involve all teams in creating the strategy
Strategy execution starts immediately from the crafting stage. Involving all departments in designing a plan motivates them to its successful implementation.
After all, your workforce knows your products & services better than anyone. They will give feedback and share ideas on how best to execute the strategy. In case you don’t use their ideas, their involvement helps get everyone engaged.
Establish effective communication
Constant communication helps establish cooperation. It is necessary for the execution of any strategy. For it to succeed, it must start from the planning process until the goals are achieved.
Communication should be between the taskforce and the managerial tier. This will help establish a checkpoint to scrutinize what’s failing and working.
There are various types of communication that you can use to keep employees engaged. This includes regular forums and one-on-one meetings. You can use questionnaires to inquire about the progress of the strategy.
Remuneration
Execution of a strategy is draining. The team may lose motivation from the many efforts involved in its execution.
Offering bonuses and incentives to your employees will keep them motivated. To weigh the employee performance, lay a tracking and reporting mechanism. It checks the team performance and rewards those making huge strides.
As a leader, you need a plan that maps the route to achieving your goals. It doesn’t matter whether you run a start-up or an established business. However success and survival of your business depends on the milestones you achieve.
Designing a detailed organisational strategy ensures each performed task syncs with your goals. It is instrumental in putting your business on the right track and ensuring you meet the big picture.
