Less is More

The simplest strategy bears the greatest result. Just ask Jordan Belfort to sell you a pen.    

But the word ‘strategy’ has been so over-used, confused, it has lost meaning and value. In a complicated world, your strategy should be simple – but powerful enough to reach and move the people that matter.  

What matters most to your business should drive your strategy. In the past two years, how many companies have you seen with ‘force for good’ as their strategy?  

In 2009, a well known high street bank told its staff that their strategy was to ‘be more strategic’. If you can’t articulate your company direction or the pillars that underpin it, you need to think again.  

Companies often have strategies, but very few have a coherent company strategy. They have marketing strategies, corporate strategies, global strategies, digital strategies and many more. All as important as each other. All requiring teams to furiously strategise and deliver against self-made KPIs, but often in silos, laddering up, not filtering down from the top.  

Most listed companies focus on their shareholder, but even this is changing and influencing company strategies. It is no longer acceptable to just think about your current shareholders, what about your future shareholders? How do you serve them?  

Value creation is the heart of every business. Brand curation creates perceived quality which in turn creates perceived value and therefore profit. A Hermes belt is a piece of leather with metalwork. While a similar product exists in Gap, Hermes has successfully and strategically cultivated brand value. Profit is just the foundation.

A successful company is built on profit but secured on culture, purpose, brand, reputation and many more facets.   

Your company strategy should first and foremost focus on profit and the tools required to deliver value. Simply putting strategy in front of a departments name or an employee’s title does not make their direction or work more valuable, it creates confusion.

Refocus: profit is paramount and a strategy to maintain profit in a positive manner for the communities you serve, will sustain success.