Business
What is strategy and does it differ with the size and type of organization? Speaking of strategy, the size and type of an organization does not impact on the strategy it has. The difference is how long it takes to design and implement the strategy. Strategy is the way to get to the vision. It's the priorities and focus areas that an organization manages on a daily basis in order to reach to its vision. A commonality of strategy, across all types of organizations, for its leadership is the daily struggle of balancing the long-term goals with the situations occurring. Understanding if it's a crisis or a change that impacts the strategic plan and being able to be flexible in adapting accordingly. This is where leadership comes into play. Identifying the pathway that will take the organization through to its goal. What helps is perspective. In a large organization, as a leader, one might be in charge of a strategic project that's part of a 3-5 years of change. Giving one's best to ensure that project milestones are achieved well and trusting that the other interconnected projects will occur as well helps in keeping to the vision and the plan. Doing this involves empowering the team in order to ensure everyone gives their best. Getting this done involves clear two-way communication that's more of a conversation. Aimed at ensuring each person understands the value of what they do and how it helps another colleague. Once that understanding occurs it creates value to self in terms of the benefit of the daily tasks and work one does. Which results in motivation and impacts productivity and engagement. This leads us into understanding how purpose and profits connect. For this discussion we'll describe purpose as solving an issue that society has. Be it individually or as an organization. Patagonia is a great example of leading through purpose. As an entrepreneur or a start-up, looking back at the need that birthed the business provides purpose. When purpose is lived and acted upon daily it becomes the culture and that brings in the profits simply because customers and clients relate and resonate with the purpose of that organization. Today business has moved or been pushed to address purpose from the ESG (environmental, social and governance) requirements. The large organizations are representatives of and for people and have to take this into account in order for investors to acknowledge their value. This shift is driving organizations to now be more focused on creating profits with purpose. Alex Brueckmann can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/company/brueckmann-executive-consulting/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/brueckmann-executive-consulting/)