Most businesses will have an overarching strategy – how they plan to stay competitive and differentiate in the market. If you know the company strategy, and how the work you do contributes to that strategy, you will be able to up your influence with stakeholders.
Today, we've got a crash course on company strategy. 🚀
🤔 What's a company strategy?
It looks different everywhere, but it often includes:
what the overarching vision is (ie. long-term aspirations),
where the company is active (ie. which markets, geographies, etc), and
how it will succeed in those markets (ie. differentiators).
Most companies have competitors – other companies playing in the same markets and delivering similar products/services. That's why the how is so important. What will your company do (or NOT do) that will ensure it can stay competitive?
There is usually an overarching company strategy and then other functional strategies that map up to it. Your company might have a product strategy, a talent strategy, or a marketing strategy – these all support the overarching strategy. Goals or targets in a function will map to these, and usually your individual goals will map to those.
How the company strategy cascades down.
🤷♀️ Why do I need to know the company strategy?
Whether you're at a 10-person startup or a 10,000 employee corporate, your role exists in some way to execute on the company strategy. Knowing the company strategy allows you to:
understand (or anticipate) decisions that might seem weird, painful, or confusing – such as restructures, changes to messaging, or roadmaps,
make decisions in your role, and
justify decisions to teammates, stakeholders, or management.
And if you're in a management role, part of your responsibility will be about communicating strategy downwards and inspiring your team.
💡 How do I use it?
When you're comfortable that you know and understand the company strategy, you will have unlocked a superpower. It effectively allows you to now do three things really effectively:
👍 Decisions
Often in our jobs, we have to make decisions based on our best judgement: which headline is more effective? Which design should we build? How should we market this launch?
Referring back to the company strategy (or your functional strategy) should be serving as a guiding light for these critical decisions. You can now ask yourself, "which one is more in line with the strategy – and why?"
👉 Influencing
When you've incorporated the strategy into your decision-making, influencing stakeholders becomes a lot simpler. You can demonstrate that:
you understand the broader business context of your work, and
you've really thought this through considering what they care about.
It also can make disagreements easier: even if the stakeholder doesn't like what you've presented, if they can agree that it's strategically aligned it's easier to get on board.
☝️ Moving upwards
And finally, the higher up you get in a business, the more important it is to demonstrate that you can think strategically. Being able to show your manager and leaders that you not only understand the strategy, but can use it to guide your own work, makes it clear that you have maturity and a business-aligned approach.
🗺️ How do I find out what the strategy is?
If you don't know the strategy, there's a few places you can go to check:
If your company has an all-hands, town hall, or similar forum, it's probably covered in there or in the slides.
You also might have documentation on the company Notion, Confluence, or intranet.
If you can't find a record of it, ask your manager or another leader in the business to walk you through it.
Once you get your hands on it, write it down or save it somewhere you'll be able to find it, and revisit it often enough. You don't have to memorise the wording, but over time you should be able to justify decisions without pulling up the slides.
🙃 What if there isn't a strategy?
Sometimes, your company doesn't actually have a strategy. This isn't necessarily cause for panic, but it does mean you have a bit more work to do because you'll have to map it our yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect, but talk to others and figure out:
What are we aiming for? What is the company's long-term goal?
Where are we playing? Who are we competing against?
What are some ways we are differentiating against these competitors?
Is the company playing offensive or defensive?
Offensive: actively growing, scaling up staff, offering, or markets
Defensive: guarding market share from competitors
Note: if you're in a large organisation, there might be some parts playing offensive and others playing defensive.
Interpreting the company strategy.
If you can gather this information, you'll be much better placed than many people in your company if there truly isn't a known strategy. Depending on your position in the business, you might even be able to influence the senior leaders of the business to work on the strategy. ✨
