How Strategy Teams Add Value For The Organization
- Savannah Wong
- Dec 7, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 27
When I first entered the world of strategy, I was lucky enough to have a teammate with a lot of experience in the strategy space. He shared that it is common for newcomers to feel unsure about their role and struggle to understand what "working in strategy" really means. I appreciated his words of encouragement and found them to be true. It took time to fully grasp my responsibilities due to the inherent ambiguity and multiple functions involved. I quickly learned that other teams in the organization were equally unclear about what the strategy team does. This lack of clarity made it challenging to collaborate effectively and create value.
I've now developed a strong understanding of what it means to work in strategy, but I still encounter colleagues who do not. I can see why; the term "strategy" is often overused in contexts that are not truly strategic. This can undermine the perceived value of an organization's dedicated strategy team. However, this perception is misleading and fails to recognize the valuable contributions that strategy teams make to an organization.
Dedicated strategy teams assist in developing the short and long-term strategy (1-5 years) and ensure alignment across the organization. They analyze market trends, assess competitive landscapes, and provide strategic choices to help leadership navigate challenges and make informed decisions. In simpler terms, strategy teams think about where the organization should go, study what others are doing, help leaders determine the best way to get there, and ensure everyone else knows the way too. Like a lighthouse guiding a boat to safety, someone planning a big family trip, or a GPS providing directions, strategy teams offer guidance and direction for the organization. There are various types of strategy—corporate, business, and functional—but they all aim for the same objectives: to create value and achieve the organization's overarching goals.
The goal is to generate value for the consumer, but dedicated strategy teams also provide significant value internally for the organization. When others take time to understand how these teams contribute and partner with them, it can greatly enhance their work and significantly increase the chances of successful execution. Dedicated strategy teams have many functions and add value to organizations in numerous ways; below are just a few examples.
Balance ideation and execution:
While most of the organization focuses on executing current priorities, strategy teams focus on what lies ahead. They dedicate space for creative, out-of-the-box thinking to develop solutions and identify new growth opportunities. A crucial part of creating future opportunities includes creativity, brainstorming, and a willingness to challenge conventional boundaries and assumptions. They ensure a healthy balance between ideation and execution so organizations can drive positive outcomes today and tomorrow.
Create strategic levers:
Imagine you're at a slot machine in a casino. You put in your money, pull the lever, and hope for a win. Similarly, an organization's leadership can rely on its strategy teams to stay informed on industry trends and business pressures to create strategic levers for leadership to pull. This enables the organization to stay ahead rather than constantly react. By dedicating time to proactively creating strategic recommendations, strategy teams ensure that leadership and the business can respond effectively to remain competitive when change occurs.
Future-proof existing work:
Strategy teams offer a unique perspective because they have direct access to leadership's vision for the organization - they helped shape that vision. Their forward-looking approach provides insight and guidance that aligns with the future direction. This benefits other teams because they can assist in future-proofing their work. Have you ever spent a lot of time and effort on a project, only to see it become irrelevant when something newer comes along? Strategy teams are responsible for staying informed about emerging trends and technologies, which enables them to guide current initiatives. Partnering with strategy groups can help prevent wasted efforts and ensure that work has lasting value.
Minimize conflicting strategies:
The number of projects within an organization can be numerous, especially in large companies where many teams solve different problems. This naturally creates the risk of duplicating efforts and diminishing project benefits. When done correctly, strategy teams sit at the top of the funnel, with a "birds-eye-view" of the work landscape, ensuring all initiatives align with the organization's strategic objectives. This means strategy can connect teams to reduce duplicative efforts and resolve conflicting strategies because they have a line of sight to the broader organizations' work. When they do identify overlaps or strategic misalignments, they bring the right people together to realign goals and approaches. This results in greater efficiency and transparency and fosters stronger partnerships, driving better outcomes.
Foster a culture of discipline:
Strategy teams create structured frameworks to align strategic objectives with measurable outcomes. They do this by utilizing a balanced scorecard. This approach makes clear performance indicators that hold leadership and the broader organization accountable, ensuring long-term strategic goals drive decisions rather than reacting to every demand. A balanced scorecard enables leadership to remain focused on a solid 5-year strategy, deliver sustained value with better strategic alignment rather than only responding to immediate pressures, and prioritize initiatives that drive value, mitigating the risk of being pulled in multiple directions.
Provide strategic governance:
Strategic governance means creating frameworks and processes and ensuring accountability to align an organization's strategic goals. In other words, it's organizing and monitoring the organization to ensure everyone marches in the same direction. The word "governance" makes others cringe because it comes across as someone else telling others what they can and cannot do. However, it's much deeper than that. It's important to have governance because, without it, everyone will go rogue, creating their own path forward with minimal line of sight into what others are doing, creating complete chaos. With so many competing priorities, governance ensures the organization prioritizes the right things. While no one likes to admit it, everyone needs stability and direction to ensure they go the right way. For example, when I put rules and boundaries in place for my 6-year-old to follow, like she can't have dessert until after dinner, she hates that! If she had it her way, she'd only eat dessert and never eat any vegetables. As her mom and leader, I must implement structure to help her make healthy eating decisions. That's what strategic governance does for an organization. It puts structures in place to ensure everyone goes in the same direction for the overall health and well-being of the organization. Dedicated strategy teams help by creating and enforcing these structures. Governance is a turn-off because some believe those structures could "get in the way" of their work. While this is possible, it's still valuable because a time will come when they rely on governance structures to protect their work from outside pressures.
Gameplan what's next:
Once current priorities are executed successfully, the question becomes: what's next? Using their forward-thinking approach, strategy teams help identify what the organization should pursue in the future. With their access to and maintenance of the long-term strategy, they provide valuable insights into the following steps to position the organization for success.
The concept of strategy can be confusing and ambiguous, but dedicating time to learn and understand it is vital for any organization's success. Dedicated strategy teams not only create value for their consumers but for the internal organization as well. Everyone benefits from partnering with strategy teams, from executive leadership to frontline workers. Their forward-thinking, visionary approach enables organizations to execute current priorities and plan the future successfully. The next time you identify team members for a project you're working on, include your leads from strategy. They will enhance your work and provide insight and guidance to ensure longevity and lasting value.
