What is the impact that your organisation is striving to achieve?
You’ve got an answer, haven’t you? Maybe it came to you straight away or maybe you had to think about it but you’re quietly confident that you have a reasonably coherent answer.
Is that impact the same as your colleagues would say? Is it the same as your Board would say? And as your customers / clients / members would say?
In my introduction to Organisational Performance I said that achieving high performance starts with a clear understanding of your desired impact as an organisation. It stands that there needs to be broad understanding and buy-in to that desired impact in order to ensure that people are pulling in the same direction. Key stakeholders need to be agreed on what winning looks like in order to achieve the win.
It is reasonable to question whether your customers must also be bought into that impact. It may not be absolutely necessary, but the most successful companies have established their desired impact in a way that customers are an essential part of it.
Take Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
Or Nike: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.*
*If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
Can you tell me what our desired impact should be please?
Not in this short article! To be meaningful, it has to be completely bespoke and build on why the organisation exists. It needs insightful stakeholder engagement that pulls together answers to big questions like ‘what do our customers value most?’ and ‘how are we uniquely placed to succeed?’ and ‘would people care if we didn’t do this?’.
To me the Tesla example is really strong and speaks for itself. Arguably the Nike statement is lacking an emphasis on their position in clothing and footwear production. It works well for them alongside the storytelling in their powerful marketing campaigns though of course that’s a luxury not everyone can afford.
Winning Strategies
For membership-focused charities and other service-oriented organisations, the impact must be clear from the perspective of members. One charity I led on strategy development for was ‘developing the leaders of tomorrow’ whilst a sport governing body I worked with was ahead of the curve in being the first to adopt the ambition to be ‘a sport for all’.
Exploring this with MSG Tours Founder and CEO Mark Gardner, we uncovered an ambition of ‘delivering the unexpected’ through ‘creating secret ingredients that make people feel special’. It is clear to see how this will be impactful for customers and can form the backbone of a winning strategy.
In business strategy terminology, we would call this value creation for customers. MSG Tours’ record in delivering for customers goes further and creates what I call a virtuous circle strategy. I’ll expand on this topic in a future article but the concept in brief is the creation of a positive feedback loop that, once set in motion, continues to spin and deliver ever more value for customers and the business.
Winning
So, winning is about having a positive impact on your customers, clients or members in a specific and pre-defined way. The trick is to get consensus on this amongst key stakeholders including your customers. Even better if you can establish a situation where the customers care that it is you who delivers that impact for them.
Let’s take it back to the start. How well has your organisation defined what winning looks like? What barriers do you face in achieving clarity on this? What tools or methods do you use?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and if you want to talk more about what winning looks like for your organisation then please get in touch directly.