Business Value Creation Post-Pandemic: Confirm Your Vision and Set Your Strategic Priorities
This is the second in Forum Solutions’ five-part series: Business Value Creation - Post Pandemic, designed to help businesses create value in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
“14% of firms grow top and bottom line in times of economic recession.”
— S&P Compustat and Capital IQ, BCG Henderson Institute analysis
Though the pandemic introduced unforeseen shocks to the economy, the critical elements that every organization must address when planning for the future remain the same: confirming your Vision, establishing strategic Priorities and Execution plans to achieve that vision.
1. Confirm (or reset) Vision
Where do you expect to be three to five years from now? It is a critical moment to think boldly, outside the box. As you imagine the future, your company vision may need to evolve to support this future state. The decisions you make now can profoundly affect your ability to achieve your vision. To imagine the path forward, first consider the critical questions facing your business post-pandemic:
Must you right-size your organization to new levels of demand?
Will you invest to grow existing product or service lines or pivot to new product or service lines?
If you pivot to new product or service lines, do you have the right operational capabilities to support this change?
2. Set Strategic Priorities
“80% of employees are uneasy about returning to work.”
— Gallup, 2020
Strategic priorities include ways you will drive growth, build operational stability, harness innovation, and safeguardemployee health and safety.
Growth – What do you need to put in place to grow and how will you engage customers and employees in such efforts?
Innovation – How can you distribute decision-making and increase employee collaboration to drive innovation?
Operational Stability – How and when will operations change to meet your future vision?
Employee Health & Safety –What adjustments to physical workspaces and to remote working policies need to be made to protect employees?
It is important to include all four of these elements in your strategic priorities and assign leaders that will champion these efforts across organizational lines.
3. Cascade Priorities for Execution
Strategic priorities with clear success measures should be methodically cascaded through the organization. Develop leading indicators that will ensure the strategic priorities are contributing to organizational success. Organizational Success Measures should set the stage at the global level and cascade to divisional Success Measures and to Departmental and individual contributions. This process enables clear line of sight for employees to understand how their work impacts organizational objectives.
Organizational Success Measures –broad brush objectives for the entire business, including how you serve customers, your employees, and your communities. These objectives are global and apply to the entire organization.
Divisional Success Measures – more targeted objectives for a product or offering. These objectives apply to a division and support the global organizational measures.
Departmental Contributions – objectives for each department within a division that are aligned to the organizational and divisional success measures. Departmental contributions serve as a link to individual contributions and enable employees to have a direct line of sight between their work and company priorities.
As you implement your strategic priorities, consider your leadership team and culture, your future workforce composition and how you will build resiliency into your business.
Forum Solutions’ five-part series: Business Value Creation - Post Pandemic includes:
Business Value Creation – Post Pandemic Part 1 of 5: Planning for the Future
Business Value Creation – Post Pandemic Part 3 of 5: Crafting Leadership + Culture
Business Value Creation – Post Pandemic Part 4 of 5: Establishing a Modern Workforce
Business Value Creation – Post Pandemic Part 5 of 5: Building Business Resiliency
Forum Solutions is a management consulting company that helps Seattle’s business and nonprofit leaders to build and implement effective strategies for transformative growth and sustainable results. Forum offers clients the right skills for every job: strategic expertise, lean execution, and agile resourcing – improving businesses at any level – from the executive suite to the individual contributor.