I found this article on the Harvard Business Review website. The name of the article is "Strategy: How to Make Yours Powerfully Simple." The article goes into a three step process for strategy creation and communication. The idea is to keep your employees working toward the same corporate end and empower them to experiment.
First, the foundation of any strategy is the vision. The vision needs to be built to last even as your more specific strategies and practices change. Vision includes the values and purposes for which your company will always stand.
The second step is to articulate and communicate you company's strategic principle using a brief, to the point, action phrase that provides a sense of direction while also encouraging innovation and risk-taking.
Third, there has to be simple rules to guide your company's unique set of strategic processes, lets you nimbly and flexibly respond to unpredictable, complicated markets--and grab the hottest opportunities.
I thought this article was interesting because it is a published article from Harvard Business Review and it addresses class topics, mainly chapter 2 (Leading the Process of Crafting and Executing Strategy). Although the process described in the article describes some of the same elements in our text, it doesn't follow the same order of "phases." But, all things considered, it is nice to see that we are actually learning something relevant.
I feel that vision is something that many companies lack, at least an intangible element that is not commonly passed along and throughout an organization. "Working toward the same corporate end". How many employees understand the vision enough to implement it. It's rare, that's why there are only a few examples, sometimes you'll witness it as Charlie does and tells the class he saw "strategy in action". Overall, passing these ideals along and empowering employees should be part of every company's strategy and incorporated into the business model.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the Vision of many companies don't get passed along the chain. A lot of the time enforcement of a Vision is set up in sets of procedures and expectations rather than laying out the vision as a whole. Stressing the end result would give stronger meaning to the policies and procedures the lower employees must follow which would create a clear end result for all employees of the company.
ReplyDeleteI think vision is very important. If you don't have a goal, then what do you have to strive towards? At my work they explain our vision very clearly in our new hire orientation, and then at our 90 day review, we have to describe how that vision affects us in our jobs. We are also given a postcard size of the vision that everyone is required to hang in their area. It's cool to see our statement posted all around the plant, and it's a good reminder to keep that as your focus.
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