You deserve better goals than “biggest”
Set a strategy that actually enables strategic decision-making
"Wow. I'm actually a little mind blown."
I was talking with a podcast host. He’d been fairly animated throughout our conversation and seemed genuinely intrigued by the concept of value-driven business.
But what I had said in my last sentence landed with him strongly enough that he stopped to reiterate it.
"When you focus on money as the goal, you have infinite options which lead to a lot of noise,” he said, his energy around the concept building as he spoke. “But you can make strategic choices when you focus on your purpose.”
He got it right.
…but unfortunately, many of the companies who just finished their plan for the year likely have a primary goal that sounds something like:
Be the biggest company in our industry and dominate our market. (And then all of the markets and then the world)
While it's all well and good to set goals to scale your reach, the aforementioned goal in no way distinguishes your company.
Worse yet, it provides no guidance for strategic decision-making.
You can theoretically pursue any direction for which you can drudge up the budget or venture capital funding in the name of making more money and being The Biggest.
But this misplaced focus causes businesses to drive in too many directions and waste a lot of time and energy while they do it. And who in the world wants to work on a team run like that?
Answer: no one.
As a value-driven business, you start with a fundamentally different strategy centered on delivering value. You make life better for the people you serve by helping them achieve specific outcomes.
Now you’re in a position to make deliberate choices about the targets you pursue. You can more rapidly test, assess, and adjust approaches because you know the point of your actions.
And that point isn’t exactly the same as every other company on the planet. You’re doing something specific for a specific group of people to help them experience a specific value.
To recap, when money is the goal, people scramble to jump on any idea or trend that might yield money — like kids at an Easter egg hunt, grabbing any shiny egg they find in the grass. It quickly devolves into a lot of tired and frustrated people with egg on their face.
When you run a business that exists to deliver meaningful value, you have one team working in one direction with an understanding of why they’re doing what they’re doing. They consider each egg using the same filter for their decisions, test the ones that pass, and only put the egg in their basket if it delivers value. They have fewer eggs, but they’re all winners.
Which sounds smarter to you?
.
.