Strategy And Purpose: Is It Really What You Say It Is?

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Let’s say that you want to grasp an organisation’s strategy – say customer strategy or customer experience strategy. By strategy I mean the organisation’s manner of ‘showing up and travelling’. How would you go about determining that?

Who would you go and ask? How many people would you ask? Would you seek out the Board? The CEO? The Marketing Director? The Sales Director? The Customer Services Director? The Operations Director? The Chief Customer Officer? The Chief Digital Officer?

What would you look at/for? Would you seek out and review the latest published accounts? The strategic plan? Mission and values statements? The brand values and guidelines? The marketing strategy? The statements that the CEO / Finance Director has made to the financial press?

You’d be wasting your time. Just like I did in my early days in consulting. Nowadays, I pay little attention to any of these aspects. What do I direct my attention towards? That which really matters. That which truly speaks without speaking. That which does not lie. What am I pointing at? I invite you to listen to a man that knows – really knows:

A strategy – whether in companies or in life – is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy, and money. With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your time, and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you. You can talk all you want about having a clear strategy and purpose for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it’s effectively implemented.

How do you make sure that you are implementing the strategy you truly want to implement? Watch where your resources flow – the resource allocation process…… You might think you are a charitable person, but how often do you really give your time or money to a cause … that you care about? If you family matters most to you, when you think about all the choices you have made with your time in a week, does your family seem to come out on top? Because if the decisions you make about where to invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.

– Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

Bringing about this consistency is not easy. It is not easy at the individual level. It is not easy at the family level. It is not easy at the team level. It is not easy at the department level. It is not easy at the company level. Which is why so few of us are in a state of integrity: between what we say, what we believe/value, and how we actually show up and operate in life. This means that the world is for the taking by the bold: those who are investing their blood, sweat, and tears consistent with the persons/organisation they aspire to be. And a future they aspire to create.

It occurs to me that the core challenge of leadership is not that of vision creation. Nor that of communicating vision. I say it is the political challenge that goes with changing the allocation of resources – and dealing with the blowback from the folks impacted by the changes.

And finally, I dedicate this conversation to a friend. He knows who he is. I wish him the very best with the game that he his playing this year!

Author: Guest Author

Published On: 28th Jan 2015 - Last modified: 8th Feb 2017
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