Strategy for businesses with a broader purpose

building blocks of a business with a broader purpose

Businesses with a broader purpose face a distinctive challenge. They must perform commercially while delivering a “more than just profit” impact. These two can seem to be in conflict, but they don’t need to be. An organisation which is aligned on their broader purpose, and empowering middle management toward that purpose at speed, will have the resilience to thrive long-term in our dynamic business environment.

Purpose-based Strategy

We help exec teams harness their broader purpose as a driver for their strategy. We work hands-on with the team to operate and behave in ways that are supportive of both their unique purpose and their bottom line, leading to better performance overall.

A good strategy describes how a business will grow and sustain itself in the face of disruption and ever-increasing competition. A great strategy goes beyond that to express the business’s broader purpose: why customers, owners, employees, suppliers, regulators, and others should want the business to succeed in the first place. A great strategy connects with all stakeholders’ fundamental human needs and deepest drivers, in a way that creates new potential for performance and delivery. Since being “good enough” just isn’t good enough in today’s world, it is vital for a business to have a strategy rooted in its sense of self; in its sense of broader purpose. 

Management Empowerment

We help middle managers to identify their role within the broader purpose of the business, and to feel empowered by that role to drive transformative change. Middle managers who can translate broader purpose and strategy into effective daily action throughout the business are essential to the future of the enterprise. And yet, most organisations suffer from a ‘permafrost layer’: middle management layers that feel disempowered and unable to drive innovation and change.

It’s never been more important for a business to have middle managers who who feel empowered and able to activate the broader purpose and business strategy in their part of the organisation. We help the Board to design an organisational structure that is built to strengthen this essential part of their workforce.

Design for Speed

We help you translate your broader purpose into daily action across the business. Many business leadership teams do “all the right things” and yet progress on crucial change initiatives remains frustratingly slow, disappointingly unambitious or ultimately elusive. That’s usually because the drive and direction from the top gets dissipated and diluted through a fragmented, opaque management model. Unclear accountabilities, flabby performance management, and a lack of shared “mind models” of the broader purpose and strategy. All these slow things down and drain energy away. A thriving business has a management model that supports robust, fast decision making leading to on-target daily action to deliver the strategy and broader purpose.