Align your organization... strategically
Marcel JB Tardif, MBA
CEO - PerformInfo Inc. Auteur, Conférencier, Coach de dirigeants 26 519 abonnés + 3 900 post 560 articles
THE UPDATED ROADMAP...
The disciplined organization (1) adopts an updated roadmap and (2), a veritable schedule for cross-checking the value of the strategic alignment of its business management modes, methods, and practices. An organization without a clear destination in sight always ends up in port (3). The problem is knowing which one!
...IS THE ONE ADAPTED TO THE ORGANIZATION
This roadmap, like any other of its kind, will only have real meaning, in terms of coherence in discourse and cohesion in action, if it is adapted to the organization's particular situation (4). Since all markets are different, as environments where competition takes place, organizations need to be different to meet the demand they generate. They need to align their strategies, structures, and processes strategically. Otherwise, they cannot adequately cope with the competitive imperatives imposed by their end in such markets. This end is essentially the creation (satisfaction) (5) of a customer (demand) (6). And this customer reflects the particularities of the organization's market because it is itself the market in question. So, responding to this customer's express demand can only be done using an offer focused on the specificity of the customer's expressed and latent needs and wants (7). And these needs and wants are constantly being challenged by competing offers, which provide better, cheaper, and faster goods and services, almost every time (8).
THE ORGANIZATION MUST MEASURE THE ALIGNMENT OF ITS STAKEHOLDERS...
An organization committed to pursuing a mission in tune with its environment and times will review its market positioning strategies yearly (9). Better still, it will ensure that the pursuit of its vision is consistent (10) with the mission it intends to accomplish. And since the organization is never alone, in its competitive space-time (11), it will measure the degree of alignment of the wants of its main stakeholders (12): shareholders, directors, managers, staff, suppliers, distributors, communities, governments, media, etc. It will want to maintain, with them, a close relationship of trust and mutual respect. It will want to maintain, with them, a web of relationships which, while contributing to the added value of its activity, respond to their interests vis-à-vis it. In short, the organization will try to reconcile the interests of as many stakeholders as possible, in the knowledge that there is an order of priority in each market according to each type of stakeholder about each type of activity it may undertake. Not all stakeholders share the same concerns, and not all have the same degree of interest in each of the organization's projects (products or services). Although the relative weight of their wants varies from one stakeholder to another, the fact remains that the end customer is the one who will have priority over anything related to the goods and services offered by the organization.
...AND REFOCUS ITS OFFERING ACCORDINGLY
Of course, to serve its purpose, the organization will be very concerned about its customers. Not only will it want to know what their needs and wants are, and how satisfied they are, but it will also involve them directly, by setting up committees for example, in defining its own offering and market service policies. It will equip itself with appropriate measurement indicators for this purpose and will follow up on the need for adjustments arising from the statistics it accumulates from the readings it makes of its situation. It will refocus its offer, in line with the changing needs of its customers, and even abandon certain customer segments for others that are more appropriate (13). One thing's for sure: it will measure the impact of its efforts to market its goods and services to target customer groups, in terms of mutual cost/benefit (customer and organization) (14). Finally, it will educate its customers (15), so that its offer is understood for what it is and what it's worth, as well as understood for what it tries to do and succeeds in doing better than others in the market.
THE ORGANIZATION'S STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT COMES FROM ITS ROADMAP
The organization will therefore align its vision, mission, values, results targets (annual achievement objectives), market positioning strategies, task execution structures, production processes, and other business management modes, methods, and practices. In short, everything that will enable it to generate the profit margin required to sustain its business over the long term. Competition is not a one-off exercise, but a comparison of renewed action in the marketplace. The organization's roadmap is all this and much more (16). The organization's strategic alignment will always derive from the relevance and applicability of its roadmap to market imperatives.
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REFERENCES:
1)????? Discipline, as a characteristic of governance, is not the most widespread quality in the world of organization. Private enterprise is in too much of a hurry to make a profit, and all too often goes off in whatever direction seems conducive to gaining ground on the competition. And yet, the company's goal is not to be more profitable as such, but to create (satisfy) customers better and better. And the customer, the right customer, is never found in the mass of consumers, but in the choice of consumers. The broader the customer base, the lower the quality of product and service, because it becomes impossible to satisfy increasingly disparate customer bases in the same way. Market succession thus passes, consciously or unconsciously, from niche to mass, hence the inevitable shift from quality to quantity. This is something that few organizations consider, starting with the public sector, whose particularity is precisely to be in mass mode across the whole range of its services. It's hardly surprising, then, that the comparison of its services with those of private enterprise, in terms of quality of offer and performance, automatically downgrades it in almost all cases.
2)????? The expression is commonly used, in various fields, to designate the broad outlines, and above all the stages, of a policy, strategy, or action plan. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuille_de_route?
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3)????? Sailing isn't difficult if you let yourself be carried along by the tide and the waves. What can be more complicated is sailing against the tide, which is what a competitive organization must do if it is to succeed better and more often than others in its market niches. The future of the organization lies not so much in repeating things, as in replacing them.
4)????? The preposterous idea that benchmarking is the solution to organizational advancement has the effect of wasting a great deal of the organization's time copying (importing) what is done elsewhere. However, the economic efficiency of a productive organization depends not on what others do, but on what it can do differently. Studying the market to replicate it is one thing; understanding it to change it is quite another. Sam Walton, who spent more time in his competitors' stores than in his own, wasn't trying to replicate what he saw elsewhere but to distance himself from what he observed in others. To be efficient in business is to be competitive, and only that which is more advanced, not on a par with others, is truly competitive. It's not “benchmarking” that should be practiced, but “breakmarking”.
8)????? Even in the public sector, customers can compare the relative quality of the services provided with what they would receive from a private company. The value of money is not limited to the private sector; it also affects public-sector customers, who must purchase services from the same available savings, their savings, and their own time (opportunity costs).
9)????? Three- or five-year plans are too vague to provide a clear picture of an organization's market strategy these days. Annual planning is far preferable because it's wiser. But planning isn't everything. You still must apply your market strategy, to find out whether or not it will bring positive results.
11)? Even the monopoly organization risks, in this globalized supply space, no longer being “perfectly” alone in offering its “exclusive” goods and services. Consumers will always be able to buy elsewhere, in person or via the Internet.
12)? Stakeholders vary from one organization to another. Worse still, their interests are never the same in number or value. The organization needs to know who, depending on the project it is putting forward, will be best, or worst, served among its stakeholders. Staying in business (serving its economic purpose), and achieving this by being competitive for the organization, means satisfying the relative balance of interests about the greatest number, if not all, of its stakeholders.
13)? Efficiency is not about meeting the demand of an inappropriate clientele, because it is unprofitable, but about meeting (satisfying) the demand of the most appropriate customer for the organization's future. Not all goods and services, nor all customers, are the most desirable for any organization. Choices must be made.
14)? The market presupposes a demand and a supply, just as it presupposes a supplier and a buyer (consumer). The market is therefore an economic proposition, which must balance the interests of the parties who agree to it. Flouting the customer is not a technique conducive to sustainable business, whatever the market is concerned.
15)? Advertising is not an attempt to educate the customer, but a one-way commercial activity.
16)? Every organization has its particularities. These must be considered when assessing the performance of the organization's activities. Our aim is generality, not organization specificity. Analysis cases must therefore be taken on a case-by-case basis, after taking into account the personal factors of the organization concerned. This is why “benchmarking” is often a detestable practice because it leads us to assume that by leveling up with others, we end up equalling them. However, benchmarking an organization's personality does not institute lasting change in the management of its business practices. Chase the natural, and it comes back at a gallop. The law of regression to the mean means that the divide between high performers and low performers is indisputable. This doesn't obliterate the fact that organizations can try to take control of their situation and make progress. What it does indicate, however, is that by doing so sporadically and without any marked innovation, and therefore without any effort of imagination, organizations delude themselves into thinking they are efficient... when in fact they are only in business. To exist is not to perform. To perform is to be in the vanguard, not in the tail.