A Winning Position

Your business Positioning frames all other strategic choices you'll make. It defines why the business exists, creates culture, aligns priorities and actions, and inspires employees and customers.

I've seen some businesses make the mistake of creating aspirational statements and proclaiming them to be their 'strategy.' Others ignore positioning or fail to give it the deliberate thought and debate needed to create a basis for differentiated coherent action. The best recognize that giving Positioning proper attention allows for better success and congruency of action across teams and time.

This week, let's jump into what Positioning is and how to create it. Then, next week, we'll dive deeper into Council meetings that give Positioning and other strategy elements life.

What is Positioning

In StrategyOS, we use the term Positioning to group together the terms and elements of our business model that are ten-plus years out and should endure time, technology, and people in the business. They define why the business exists or its Purpose.

– Mission: Why you are in business; the enduring purpose of the business

– Vision: How you will be viewed long term; your BHAG

– Values: Guiding principles for decisions and actions

These guide strategic choices and help to give direction when there is uncertainty. They help guide and energize people and streamline the evaluation of choices to create focus. Define something worth doing that you are passionate about. Make that your mission. Create a vision to define success and inspire working on that mission. Add values as guiding principles to help navigate the path.

When you get Positioning right, you can carve the components in stone to endure beyond anyone’s tenure in the company. While staying simple, they need to create a unique value proposition that allows the business to excel and endure over time.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins suggests doing this by focusing on what he calls getting the ‘Hedge Hog Concept’ finely tuned. His Hedge Hog Concept helps create a business's ‘reason for being.’ It links passion, unique capabilities, and financial returns in your strategy.

In Collins' words:

“The key is to understand what your organization can be the best in the world at, and equally important what it cannot be the best at—not what it ‘wants’ to be the best at. The Hedgehog Concept is not a goal, strategy, or intention; it is an understanding.”

This understanding adds meaning to the business model Positioning and ensures the right focus when creating priority Themes. To do this well, you will need some level of analysis to understand what most impacts your success or what is called your business Context. Some start with a SWoT analysis to highlight important ideas. All should be guided by input from customers, employees, and partners. The understanding is created by asking the right questions, debating the answers, trying out resulting decisions, and ruthlessly evaluating their impact. This leads to a focused understanding to create the Positioning needed to guide other elements of a good strategy.

To expand on his hedgehog concept and create the right focus, I suggest an understanding that addresses all the questions proposed by Lafley and Martin in Play to Win. They add two questions to the three from the Hedgehog Concept:

1. What is our winning aspiration? What is our business's mission or passion. What problem do we solve or high-level goals guide decisions.
2. Where will we play? What geographies, product categories, customers segments, channels, verticals.
3. How will we win? What is our value proposition. What drives our economic engine and financial returns.
4. What capabilities must be in place? What can we be the best in the world at doing. What is our unique competitive advantage. How will we take advantage and grow the unique capabilities of our people, processes, knowledge, and resources to win.
5. What systems are required? How will we implement management systems, structures, and measures to guide success (including #StrategyOS) to support our choices.

Creating Positioning

You may already have some elements of positioning statements documented for your company. If they serve you well, you may not need to modify them extensively. But, most who are starting to implement a StrategyOS will need to start new or want to revisit them to ensure they are solid touchstones for at least the next 10 years and ideally longer.

I've previously covered how to create strong Values. I suggest starting with Values since they guide all aspects of working together. Then work on your Mission and Vision vision together. You'll find some of the ideas interact and feed each other since Vision is the result of a well executed Mission.

If you are stuck, look to other companies, brands, and people for inspiration. Here are a few examples:

Create a Mission and Vision that takes advantage of your unique understanding from the hedgehog questions and analysis above. Ensure your Positioning allows for a strategy that meets all the green flags discussed in our previous newsletter. Really. Use the 10 green flags as a checklist and be sure you have a strong 'yes' for each flag.

Create an initial documented statement for each Positioning element. This is best done in a working session (Leadership Council Meeting) that allows key leaders and influencers in your company to give input. You may benefit from outside facilitation to ensure structure and balanced debate. Regardless, group input will produce a better result than any individual can create.

Document your Positioning on your Business Model Vision Cheat Sheet. Use it to guide shorter-term Strategy Themes and Plan elements. Work backward from your enduring Mission and long-term Vision to the near-term using Values as your guide. This creates confidence in knowing what is the best next action that moves your business toward ultimate success.

Test drive your Positioning for a quarter or so. Then revisit whether it is serving the intent at ongoing Council Meetings and the next quarterly meeting (see Rhythm meetings.) Check again against any revisions to your business Context and the green flags of strategy. When you have a couple of quarters with no changes, it is time to start making these statements the cornerstones on which to build other elements of your winning strategy.

How does your Positioning align and motivate people? How does it set priorities to make strategic choices for long-term success?

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Adventure humbly. Live Boldly.