Four tips to inject strategy into your company DNA

Differentiating your offer and growing ahead of the market is much more complex than it used to be. To combat overcrowded marketplaces, company strategy and execution must coincide with research initiatives and teamwork that grows stronger over time. This takes place at the molecular level of your firm.

Injecting strategy into your DNA requires a disciplined approach that aligns motivated team members with the tools and systems needed to develop and execute a compelling strategy.

At T&Co, we’ve spent decades working with industry leaders to develop a playbook of tools any organization can use to push their strategy further. Here are four steps to cement strategy into your team’s DNA:

1. Define—create and follow a disciplined, scalable, and repeatable strategic growth system

There are many systems companies can use to develop, deploy, and iterate on their strategy. At T&Co, our guidepost is the Growth Development Process. The GDP allows us to get a macro picture of our client’s environment and develop a ​​tailored strategy that better appeals to the customer’s needs. It starts with defining your market and ends with executing against a portfolio of high-potential initiatives. Here are its main components:

• Strategy – Define your ‘North Star’ and strategic priorities by evaluating market opportunities and setting a growth goal

• Innovation & Initiative Development – Translate your strategy into a prioritized list of short-term and long-term initiatives

• Execution & Tracking – Deploy your initiatives in-market and monitor results for scaling and iteration

2. Align—get your team motivated and aligned on the system

Injecting strategy requires the entire organization to be on board. It’s crucial to train leadership, management, and team members to focus on the new system and drive results.

Find new ways to get the team excited about what the strategic growth system will do for the organization’s growth. Encourage collaboration over competition, celebrate team wins, and use a collaborative planning process to increase engagement and close the communication gap between leadership and team members.

Be sure to include the entire team throughout the process as you establish the system. When teams and individuals work toward the same vision, understand overarching goals, and see how their contributions connect to broader organizational purpose, alignment is achieved.

3. Equip—supplement your approach with tools your teams can understand and use to move the strategic growth system forward

There is a myriad of tools that teams can use to help develop and execute a compelling strategy. Here are some examples of what we use at T&Co:

Target Setting

A good strategy starts with setting an ambitious but attainable target. There are many steps to choosing the right target, but one often overlooked is determining the growth gap relative to your goal. To find your growth gap, start by looking across your portfolio to see what is achievable based on historical growth and new initiatives. Then, add in risk adjustment to determine how much you might be falling short relative to your growth goal.

Knowing your target is one thing—identifying where growth can come from is another. We leverage market mapping to determine where to play in the market. We look at each segment to determine where the most significant growth potential may exist based on market growth, competitive pressures, the company’s positioning, and much more. 

Market Mapping

4. Apply & Iterate—ensure your team is putting the tools to use and not only developing but implementing prioritized initiatives

So you’ve set up the right system with enabling tools and team alignment. Review progress regularly to iterate and improve on your strategic growth system over time.

Set up systems for tracking and accountability to ensure the team can see their growth as they work with the new system and tools. Use collaborative planning processes to help you get all the information you need to intersect bottom-up tactical planning with top-down organizational strategy.

This process only scratches the surface of what is required to develop a robust strategic growth system. To learn more, you can contact us directly at info@treacy.co.