Are you now creating a strategy to douse yet another fire or exploit an opportunity at your company?
How will you decide what to construct?
Frequently, I hear from CEOs and various consultants that they’re deeply involved in building a new strategy for something or other.
Upon asking these execs to identify the basis, or acorn, for a particular strategy, nebulous gobbledygook is what I hear, more often than not.
Bad sign.
The answer to my question should NOT be nebulous gobbledygook; it must be crystal-clear and universal: our brand.
What Is a Strategy?
A strategy is a plan to achieve an aim.
What aim? The brand — the boss of products, people, and processes — articulates that aim.
If you’ve read my books and watched my videos, you know that most companies have weak brands and, consequently, their employees cannot recite them on command.
How, then, can they create strategies? Moreover, if they are strategy-challenged, what kind of derivative, subordinate tactics will they devise?
Getting the picture?
In Chapter 7 (“Know Your Company”) of Brand Is Destiny: The Ultimate Bottom Line, I tackle, among many critical topics, the entroprise, the chaotic enterprise. Biggest reason for entropy in the enterprise? A deficient brand.
Purpose & Direction
If people don’t know why they’re doing something, they’ll do it badly — or not at all.
Place a telephone call to almost any company. How often do you find that the employees there have any idea what the hell is going on? Almost never.
The brand sets your company’s purpose and direction. That’s why your brand, akin to a train engine, pulls every strategy you develop.
So, if your employees don’t know, and therefore can’t recite, your company’s brand — which means you don’t have one — how can they generate actionable strategies?
They can’t.
Parting Advice to CEOs
To repeat my ongoing admonition: Branding is your #1 responsibility and priority. Ignore this axiom at your peril.
Like a train engine, brand pulls strategy. Weak brand, defective strategy, impotent tactics.
All aboard?
© 2017 Marc H. Rudov. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author
Marc Rudov is a branding advisor to CEOs,
producer of MarcRudovTV, and author of four books