How to define the strategic orientations of your company?

Market transformations follow and succeed each other at a frantic pace. Difficult, then, to stay the course. Christophe Praud, from the consulting firm Maven’s strategic orientations. Delivers four concrete actions to put in place so as not to lose your head.

It is difficult today for a leader to exempt himself from the fundamental changes imposed by the market. Whether in consumer behavior, in the ways of addressing a market. In the arrival of new players who upset everything in their path, in disintermediation. In the relationship to the value of things, in use rather than property. Yesterday’s receipts suffer and no longer produce the cake that will sell tomorrow. Perplexed and often helpless. The leader must make orientation choices without GPS and must learn to play a new game without being able to read the manual. Because there is no manual.

Hardly does he wish to make his organization more flexible than he reads prose on the liberated company, hardly does he establish a reflection around the associated services that he has bombarded with information on the functional economy. No sooner does he question his distribution method than he is asked what his business would look like if it were “uberized”, hardly does he equip his salespeople with tablets connected to the server for more responsiveness than he discovers a cloud application that is doing better strategic orientations, in short, he no longer knows where to turn as he is flooded with reflections, articles, experiences, and information on the dazzling changes to which he must adapt or risk probable disappearance.

So, I would like to reassure these leaders and tell them that they have an incredible chance that many won’t, that of being able to change things and do better tomorrow what they did yesterday.

For this I propose 4 keys of action:

Action #1

The first key to action consists of initiating changes one after the other by choosing chronologically what is the most digestible for your company and your employees. Redesign of the offer, change of process, lean strategy, digitalization, alliance strategy, whatever, the important thing is to take action and do it immediately with regard to its means and its market.

Action #2

The second key action consists in informing all employees of the changes that you foresee by giving them the desire and the means to think about your model of tomorrow. Put in place everything that exists as a device for collaborative innovation, creativity, training and if necessary, do not hesitate to get help from professionals outside the company like M&A advisory firm.

Action #3

The third key action is to focus solely on creating value. Distinguish clearly in what you sell what brings value to your customers from what does not. Tell yourself that what does not bring it will necessarily be quickly addressed otherwise on the market. By you or by another if you don’t break the codes.

Action #4

The fourth consists in accepting to question everything. Distribution agreement, game territory, sales method, marketing, HR. Yesterday’s people and methods are not all capable of understanding tomorrow’s world. It’s hard but that’s life.

I will end by quoting Saint Exupery who very rightly said “when everything moves around us. We need realities that last”. Understanding requires invariants’ strategic orientations. Support and I believe that the invariants of an entrepreneur will always remain the customers. And their expectations as well as the collaborators who understand them.