Today we will continue our management discussion on the topic “Business Structure for Sustainable Growth”.
THE FOUR BASIC GROWTH STRATEGIES
There are four basic growth strategies you can employ to expand your business, they include:
Market penetration
Product development
Market development and
Diversification.
MARKET PENETRATION – This strategy does not involve creating new products or moving to a new market, it is a move to increase your market share with the current products and/or services. This can be achieved by reducing the price of products or services or rejigging marketing efforts.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – This is about developing a new product for the same market. For example, a company that produces alcohol can expand its line of business to include soft drinks. The company can sell this new product to existing customers and grow the business without tapping new markets.
MARKET DEVELOPMENT – This entails introducing your products or services to new markets entirely in order to service all underserved or unserved customers.
DIVERSIFICATION – Diversification entails creating an entirely new product for a new market. This is the most uncertain form of growth strategy. The move might be worth it if the strategy is right and otherwise with the wrong strategy.
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
What keeps an organization going and motivates the people within it to always strive to do the right thing rather than the easy thing? For most forward-looking organisation, the answer is culture.
What is Culture?
Culture is the character and personality of the organization; it brings about the business uniqueness and it is the sum total of the organisation’s values, mindsets, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours, and attitudes that constitute an environment conducive to success. Culture defines the blueprint upon which the organisation operates, and gives the employees a sense of direction at the workplace. With culture, all members of the organisation know their roles and responsibilities and are well guided on the required strategies to accomplish the tasks allocated.
Creating a sustainable company culture for the organization requires blending autonomy with collaboration, socializing with productivity, and work and play. Positive workplace culture attracts talent, drives engagement, impacts happiness and satisfaction, and affects performance. Instilling a winning culture requires changing how people think about the company and altering habitual behaviours.
Companies that create and sustain winning cultures tend to implement these five key steps as identified by Harvard Business Review (2018).
A. Perform a culture audit and set new expectations
B. Align the team.
C. Focus on results and build accountability
D. Manage the drivers of culture
E. Communicate and celebrate
HOW TO CREATE A HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE
• Clarify values and communicate them every day. Value added to your activities makes a company a better place to work and more profitable.
• Reinforce positive behavior.
• Encourage open communications.
• Employee empowerment.
• Collect Feedback.
• Focus on what matters.
An organisation’s culture comprises its Vision, Values, Practices, People, Narrative, Place, etc.
VISION – A great culture starts with a vision or mission statement. The vision simply guides a company’s values and provides it with purpose. That purpose, in turn, orients every decision employees make. When they are deeply authentic and prominently displayed, good vision statements can even help orient customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. If your organisation does not have a vision, even if you have been in the business for 20 years, you are still doing trial and error because you do not have any foundation on which your business is built. You aren’t pursuing any goal; therefore, you can neither have a formidable plan nor a winning strategy. Therefore, carve out a vision today, and if you do not know how to go about it, seek help.
To be continued next week.
Sunday Ade Bello is a multi-talented and an analytically inspired management trainer, writer and examiner. He is the CEO of WorkLife Training Professionals, Lagos.
