Three Directional Business Strategies

• A company's strategic message must be clear to all employees. business colleagues preparing for business meeting image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com

  Companies in today's corporate America must fight to stay on top. Corporations are required to do more than ever before to remain successful, or even to stay in business. Gone are the days when making and selling a good product was enough. Global competition today is sophisticated, and successful organizations understand that the key to prospering is to develop clear business strategies and to implement them throughout the company.

Corporate Direction

• Business strategy needs to begin from the top down. The first directional strategy that top management should focus on is corporate direction. This means, first, determining the mission statement of the entire organization, and identifying the company's role in the world. What was the company created to do? In what ways has it been successful in doing so? Where has it failed or lost its direction? Answering these questions will help to design the company's corporate direction. If the CEO of a company, its investors and board of directors do not agree on a simple message of direction, the company can not move forward as an entity with a single purpose. Determine the company's simple goal, what changes need to be made to achieve that overall goal, and plainly put that goal in a mission statement.

Market-Based Business

• While corporate direction looks at a company's place in the world, a market-based business strategy compares the company to its direct competition within a specific marketplace. As opposed to the more all-encompassing question of what defines an entire company, this analysis is more esoteric. Which company is the best at doing what we do? Is it us? If so, does everyone know we're the best? How do we stay that way and grow? If not, who is the best? And why? Direct comparisons to the competition must be made of all products and services. A product that used to sell itself may be nearly obsolete if the market has changed without management realizing it. A service that is completed elsewhere for less money, or with higher quality, must be challenged.

Operational

• If corporate direction is the "head" of this process, and the business strategy of the product is the "heart," then the strategy concerning operational methods is indeed the "hands." The ideas of the head and the best intentions of the heart mean nothing without the hands to deliver the product to the people. This may well be the most crucial strategy of all. Time and money are often spent analyzing a company's business plan and its product, but the CEO rarely takes time to watch her employees build that product, or sell it to the public. Operational strategy is about designing ways to ensure that each level of the organization is on message with the company's direction. Once corporate and market-based business directions have been determined, training and implementation needs to occur throughout the company to get the message out to the world.