In your company’s journey, is there a destination?
A business strategy roadmap must begin with defining the company’s purpose and ambition
I’ve read Lewis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland and watched the movie a few times with my kids when they were little. One of the things about the story that struck me and has stayed with me is this dialogue when Alice was confronted with a fork in the road:
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where. The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: … So long as I get somewhere.”
I used to tap this scene to teach my kids about setting direction for oneself.
Fast-forward to many years later, I find myself using this as an inspiration for helping companies wanting to find their way.
Some companies are like Alice. They go about their business, keeping busy, but without long-term direction. They operate on a year-to-year basis. If they hit this year’s target (assuming they even have one), well and good. If not, then there’s always next year. Sure there are companies which grow despite operating this way. They get somewhere, somehow, just like Alice. But simply running on short-term goals does not open up a path towards a more significant and sustainable growth and success.
One of the things we are often asked to do by client companies is strategic planning. They want us to help them identify their strategic priorities and develop a roadmap to guide them in the next several years.
The first question we ask them is the exact question of The Cheshire Cat: “Where do you want to go in the first place?” “Where do you want to take the company in the next five or ten years?” Without a defined destination, having a plan or a roadmap is useless. We don’t want to end up just ‘somewhere’. We want our journey to be intentional and purposeful.
We strongly advise that a company defines its Purpose and Ambition (sometimes called Mission & Vision) first before embarking on strategic planning.
BIGGER PICTURE
Purpose and Ambition ground a company to something more profound and meaningful. They help ensure that the company’s priorities and plans are not developed in a vacuum, not tactical, not short-term, but rather developed in the context of a bigger picture.
The Purpose Statement is an articulation of the company’s core reason for existence and how it adds value to the lives of its stakeholders. It answers why you do what you do beyond making money. For example, Google’s Purpose is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
In his book Start with Why, Simon Sinek says that people buy not what you do, but why you do it. When people believe in your Why, they tend to be inspired to support you because you create meaning for them, whether they be your employees, customers or business partners. It has been shown that companies with a clear purpose have better business results versus companies with no purpose because they tend to have stronger brand equity, more loyal customers and more committed employees.
The Ambition Statement is the desired future state of the business and organization that the company aspires to. It answers what the company wants to become. It is written in a way that provides focus towards a clear end state and inspires employees to expend all effort to work towards it, as illustrated by Google’s Ambition “To provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
The Ambition becomes the fundamental basis for setting the company’s financial and non-financial goals as well as its strategic imperatives for the next several years. It is the destination that needs to be reached.
The Purpose & Ambition Statements can be considered as the anchor for a Strategic Plan.
Some leaders are tempted to skip this step because they find talking about these topics too fuzzy, too subjective, maybe even too emotional. They prefer to get on with the hard stuff, i.e., strategic planning. But as The Cheshire Cat responded to Alice, ‘which way you go from here depends a good deal on where you want to go’.
So, first things first. Define your Purpose & Ambition — your Why and What. Then you can develop your How, which is your Strategic Plan.
Acumen’s Strategy Navigator framework integrates a company’s Purpose & Ambition into the strategic planning process, thus ensuring that the resulting strategies and plans are anchored on a clear destination. Of course, it takes more than this to make a good strategic plan. But our experience is that the approach of beginning with the Purpose & Ambition is likely to deliver a more compelling, meaningful, and comprehensive strategic plan that inspires sustained support from the organization.
A well-anchored strategic plan maximizes the opportunity to achieve better business performance, to motivate and engage employees, and to have a deeper impact to society. With this, companies don’t just get somewhere; they get to somewhere worthwhile. — Zinnia Rivera, Client Director, Acumen Strategy Consultants, acumen.com.ph.
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