BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

From a business perspective, it is useful to focus the efforts of all employees around these value drivers. Every employee should know how their role contributes to the overall value of the business and how they can increase this value while containing or reducing costs. The resulting focus of the company’s resources around these simple (but not simplistic) issues allows the business to have a constant dialogue on how to achieve their goals, and strategy becomes a living reality rather than a dead document in the CEO’s filing cabinet.

I once spoke to an employee who worked in the packing division of a client, and asked her what she does. She described the nature of her job in physical terms. When I pushed her to see whether she understood how her job fitted into the ‘bigger picture’ of the business, it quickly became clear that she had no idea what the end product was, or even what the business was about. How does she feel when asked at home what she does? How energised or ‘empowered’ is she? Do we not sometimes resign ourselves to the same fate? Are we also just a small cog in a big machine? Don’t rock the boat and get on with the job!

The value drivers and business purpose can be used to counter this tendency that occurs due to the increasingly specialised nature of our workplace. They can be used not only to get everyone singing in tune, but singing with pride and gusto.

Developing a business and transformation strategy

Every business takes its resources and focuses them around its purpose, while driving down its costs and driving up shareholder value. This is the essence of all business, and greater margins result from a larger gap between costs and the value the customer experiences.

The need to drive up value while simultaneously driving down costs is true on an aggregate level as well as an individual level for every employee in your business. But these broad statements need to be translated into specific changes in action or behaviour, or there is no point to them.

Determining the goals for each value driver in your business

Goals are descriptions of what you want to achieve in order to drive up the value for the client. A similar brainstorming process to the one discussed earlier can be used, but now ask the team to respond to the question: ‘What goals can be put in place over the short, medium and long term to enhance and enable each of the value drivers in turn?’

Determining the actions – giving impetus to the goals

Each goal needs to be studied in turn in order to develop specific actions that will transform it into a reality. My experience is that three well- conceived, high-level actions at senior level are more than sufficient to catalyse the goal, so resist the temptation to list a million actions that won’t see the light of day.

Now that you have a value-based view of your company strategy, how do you bring transformation into the picture?

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