6. Your strategy needs to be made clear to everyone in the organization. Everyone. It helps if they have helped create it.
The best strategies don’t sit there in three-ring binders, accompanied by more binders of data and analysis.
They are,instead, boilable down to statements you can laminate onto a card suitable for carrying in a
wallet or purse. Not mushy statements of vision or “corporate purpose,” but hard-edged declarations
along the lines of “We aim to be the low-cost provider of industrial fasteners to the five largest
appliance makers in the North America and Europe.” Then make sure that everyone in the enterprise—
including the folks who sweep the floors at night—has the card, can repeat what it says,
and understands the reasoning behind the strategy.
Clarity and shared understanding will be your best weapons in the effort to carry out your strategy.
Another lesson from the strategy revolution: It was often companies with the most elaborate strategic-
planning apparatus that ended up struggling to implement what the apparatchiks had concocted.
You’re inevitably better off trying to bring the people who will be carrying out strategy into the
process of devising it. Once you and they are agreed on the corporate future, and everybody has
got a card, trust them to use their judgment and imagination to make it a reality in the world.
After all, they’re the ones who are actually keeping your costs under control, courting
customers, and carrying the battle to competitors out in the marketplace.
ADDITIONAL READING: ENTERPRISE by Tom Peters
“Enterprise* (*at its best):
An emotional, vital, innovative, joyful, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that maximizes individuals’ growth and elicits maximum concerted human potential in the wholehearted service of others.
