What Your Business Needs

The erstwhile world of business is no longer in play. Disruption has become a norm. Businesses are now struggling to be sustainable and to create growth!

Trust, engagement, value, sustainability and change are now regular words spoken in every organization.

Yet concise and impactful action seems to be missing from the picture.

Strategically its critical to understand three key changes that are impacting on business functionality:

1. Rapid change in technology has impacted the experiences people have with brands. It has resulted in the word-of-mouth referral, increasingly, becoming the gold standard for trust. All thanks to social media.

2. AI, machine learning and automation has impacted business processes, productivity and investments. Creating a need for different skill-sets, agility of business strategies and for a whole new leadership style.

3. With five generations in the workforce, generational diversity, has brought the focus back on employees and the necessity to address the areas of employee engagement, advocacy and culture as part of strategy.

These have resulted in businesses having to identify and deliver a clearly defined and tangible social benefit which clearly shows the purpose, of the business, over and above making profits.

Trust and value have emerged to be key to growth.

A New Paradigm

This is the new paradigm in which businesses must operate.

A paradigm that is steadily putting people and purpose at the centre of strategy.

Businesses that still ignore these two are only doing so at their own peril. The old management practices of product superiority, price difference, discounts, trade-channel efficacy, cost-control no longer work to create sustainability.

This process is the disruption as we know it where the old business models have become obsolete.

So, what is it that businesses are missing or not aware of?

Vision?

Resources?

Strategy?

Purpose

Businesses, whether we like it or not, have always only had one purpose— economic benefit to its shareholders.

This profit-at-all-costs view has been questioned, shaken and cast aside given the crisis’s that industries have had to weather.

For a business to grow today it must have a purpose that’s more than just make-a-profit. Purpose that provides a clear benefit to society and its community. The purpose needs to engage the entire ecosystem of employees, customers, vendors, partners, in other words the people connected with the business. 

To do this effectively people and the benefit to people must be at the centre of any business strategy. Not product. Not technology. Not finances. Not profit value. These have their respective positions in strategy as a support or enabler or facilitator.

Focus on people 

Any business is alive only because of its people.

Its employees.

Employees represent the brand. The culture they create internally manifests as the overall brand experience.

By focusing on the ideas, strengths and advocacy of its people a business can define a strong purpose or refine its current purpose so that it is clearly linked to a social benefit. 

Whilst there are organizations who are doing a great job in employee engagement, through taking on board the ideas given and providing empowerment, they and others are still delivering a highly fragmented brand experience delivery.

This occurs as the default state of all organizational structures is the age-old function-based departmental silos. It results in each department creating their own perception of the brand experience and executing that as delivery with different stakeholders who interact with the brand.

Create Value

The way out of this scenario is to work top-down and bottom-up simultaneously, within the organization structure, to answer one important question on how to create value.

C-level and business owners perceptions coupled with the executives and managers perceptions need to be out in the open and discussed. In order to arrive at a consensus description of what the brand experience, of that business, is to be.

This the point at which businesses actually work on their brand experience and identify the roadmap to creating value.

The brand experience becomes the north-star, so to speak, for the business and all activities are held up against that consensus description and evaluated, measurably, to ensure real value is being achieved.

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Joy Abdullah is a strategic marketing leader who helps CEOs make marketing decisions, that are based on having a unique brand experience, which create sustainable profits.

His mission is to humanize the workplace by guiding CEOs & business owners to engage, appreciate and recognize the value employees bring in creating the brand experience that builds a strategic advantage for the brand and delivers sustainable profits.

He has Asia-centric international experience in business strategy, marketing, and business operations that deliver measurable and profitable growth. His expertise is in helping businesses harness the value of their employees in creating a unique brand experience that delivers sustainable profits.

He guides, consults, and speaks on the importance of brand experience in business strategy from an Asian market perspective.

Click here for his articles.  

?Connect with Joy on:

1. Linked In 

2. Twitter @JoyAbdullah

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