by Dr. James Mwangi
Organizations are created through well-executed Strategies
This book helps break down strategy into practical phases: foundation, creation, and execution, with structured step-by-step methods in all processes. If these phases are done well, they contribute to not only growth but also to the sustainable growth of organizations. This is a framework worth following. It matches well with the story and growth of the Equity Group and why I believe that a well-defined and well-executed strategy has been a critical part of our success.
Great organizations must spend a lot of time developing their purpose, vision, and core values. In my experience, getting these elements right is one of the priorities for top leadership. One of the things that I have found in leading the Equity Group is the importance of ensuring that our purpose resonates with our customers—their wants and needs, as well as what they value. We have been successful as a bank by innovating our products and services to respond to the changing needs and wants of our customers, who are largely SMEs (small- to medium-sized enterprises), while remaining rooted in what they value: prosperity. I found my experience in this respect beautifully resonating with the content in the strategic foundation stage in this book.
In addition, this book brings out something that is dear to me, that the purpose must be shared with the business’s stakeholders, especially its customers. I particularly liked the quote from Simon Sinek that “. . . customers don’t buy the products and services you provide; they buy why you do it.” Finally, I could not agree more with the authors that communicating purpose, vision, and core values inspires pride, a strong sense of ownership, and an emotional commitment to the organization.
Great organizations are prepared for the unexpected events across business lifecycle. In fact, every business must be prepared for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) and this must be reflected in the strategy. For us at Equity Group, we have incorporated this mindset in our strategy, and we continually align our operations teams to predict and plan for potential VUCA events. This allows us to respond expeditiously to opportunities and potential threats. I cannot emphasize the importance of making VUCA-readiness part of the leadership and culture experiences as leaders are ultimately responsible for creatively anticipating and responding to VUCA events with their teams through timely engagement, communication, and innovation.
Leaders must also take advantage of VUCA to safeguard and strengthen customer relationships, which ultimately determines the success of the business. This has been our experience. Strategic intelligence is the principal building block for strategy development. The book comprehensively covers both internal and external environmental analysis, with the authors being very generous with several practical tools. I found resonance with the authors’ argument that the process of gathering strategic intelligence is an ongoing process, resulting in strategy being continually updated.
One of the things that struck me as important is the skills that people need to be effective in developing strategic intelligence: futuristic thinking, conceptual thinking, creativity, continuous learning, and customer focus skills. I feel that this is likely to be one the things that many business leaders do not often consider.
But the issue that impacted me the most is the strategic partnership grid. This is a tool to be used to build successful strategic partnerships with customers, competitors, suppliers or vendors, regulatory bodies, and other key stakeholders. The grid maps alignment of purpose on one axis and the diversity of perspectives or ideas, competencies, and networks on the other. This grid demonstrates that synergistic partnerships only happen when there is high diversity in perspectives, competencies, and networks of relationships brought into the partnership, and the parties are aligned in their purpose. With this simple grid, I could explain why certain partnerships are successful while others fail right from the beginning. This grid gives Equity Group a tool to use in partnership building. I am sure many business leaders will find it useful too.
Great organizations are ambitious and clearly use innovation to deliver growth strategy. In fact, I am of the mindset that you cannot deliver ambitious strategy without “out of box” and “new box” thinking. This why creativity and innovation are so important to our business. I believe they are the two sides of the “growth coin”. When we started the bank, we focused on the low-income and unbanked people in Kenya. These segments were large but unserved and regarded highly risky by multinational banks. We also focused on raising money locally. This took courage and different thinking and being very innovative. We focused on speed and access to grow our customer base with lots of problem solving along the way. Without innovation, it is impossible to deliver growth. And without clear strategy and innovation potential, efforts are wasted.
The execution section has several illustrated tools, in terms of canvases, scorecards and templates. Leaders and operational staff involved in strategy execution have a rich repertoire of tools to guide them in effectively implementing strategy and realizing planned results.
We in Equity Group are still pursuing perfection in strategy, and this book will contribute greatly to our pursuit.