ENTERPRISE STRATEGY

ENTERPRISE STRATEGY

What is strategy?

A strategy is a high-level course of action to achieve a goal. In the general corporate sense, an organisation's strategy document contains the its goals and the strategies to achieve them. They are intentionally high-level to provide an overview of the key strategic directions.

Why is strategy important?

A strategy is crucial for all organisations as it provides a roadmap, aligning efforts towards common goals, guiding resource allocation, making better decisions.

For private sector organisations it can create a competitive advantage by articulating cutting edge ways to achieve growth, sustainability, customer experience and trust.

Without strategy organizations can drift, are unable to prioritise, create silos, generate duplication and waste resources, comprise customer experience and erode employee trust and engagement.

In the words of the Australian Institute of Company Directors "Every organisation exists to fulfill a fundamental purpose, embodied in its vision, mission, values and goals. Organisational strategy involves clarifying this core purpose and determining how the organisation will achieve its goals in light of internal capabilities and external market forces."

Types of strategy

Enterprise
Domain specific

Enterprise strategy

Enterprise strategy connects an organisation's purpose, vision, values and goals with its strategic intent and high-level strategic direction.

Capturing these crucial elements of your organisation in one place creates a unified voice and single source of truth for your team members to understand where the organisation is heading.

It is a vital communication tool for team members to see how their area meaningfully contributes to the big picture. It provides direction for business planning and supports efficiency, prioritisation and productivity.

When team members can see how their work contributes to the strategic direction of the organisation it achieves alignment naturally, removes silos, increases collaboration and integration, boosts morale, and leads to high levels of engagement. This also has a positive effect on your customer experience.

Domain specific strategy

Enterprise strategy covers the entire organisation (horizontal) whereas domain specific strategies pertain to a specific aspect (vertical). A domain specific strategy contains high levels of detail on a particular business aspect or 'domain'. For example, financial strategy, asset strategy, workforce strategy, tech/digital/AI strategy etc.

These sub-strategies cascade (downstream) of the enterprise strategy. In some organisations there is only one strategy (enterprise) with domain specific plans. It depends on specific needs of the organisation.

Domain specific strategies and or plans cascade from the enterprise strategy and provide the detail of how the strategic intent will be achieved i.e. specific actions to be delivered by whom and when.

Difference between a strategy and a plan

A strategy provides the strategic intent, direction, success indicators and targets with timeframes - essentially the 'why', the 'what' and the strategic 'when'.

In addition to the above, a comprehensive strategy will often also include an overview of the context to the strategy, alignment to the organisations purpose and values, a summary of the current state, the key external and internal drivers affecting the organisation, a statement of the desired future state (vision), and more detailed descriptions of the strategic directions and associated rationale.

A plan provides the heavy lifting detail to 'implement' or 'operationalise' the strategy, including specific actions, delivery timing, staging, sequencing, responsibilities, dependencies, constraints etc - essentially the 'who', the 'how' and the tactical 'when'.

Benefits of developing or refreshing you organsation's enterprise strategy:

Helps your organisation understand the changing strategic context, risks and opportunities
Timlely review of the mission, values and goals
Ensures collaboration for setting strategic priorities and decision making
Supports management execution
Fosters innovative solution development
Gives strategic meaning to performance measurement and reporting