Lack of clarity about what your advantage is … is a disadvantage.

The signals:

Customers play us against other competitors – constantly pushing us to a lower price or offering more at the same price

Not meeting goals and objectives – particularly profitable revenue growth.

Competitors seem to be accelerating faster than the company – successful strategies of the past are no longer working,especially in new business development.

Go-to-market complexity is creating confusion in marketing, sales and distribution – there is a lot of disagreement about what is needed, what works, what doesn’t and what to prioritize.

A wake-up problem has occurred – loss of a key customer, departure of a key leader, failure of a major initiative, or a big win by a competitor.

Marketing and sales spending has less impact than it use to – tactical complexity has grown, productivity has declined or is very hard to measure.

Disagreement among the management team – frustrating disagreement about strategic direction, the right priorities, the number of priorities, the cause of problems.

Initiatives don’t get the results expected or needed – generating a lot of rework.

Learn how we solve these problems.

Businesses are a lot like these two bottles. 

>The map behind the bottle is the competitive strategy.
>The water is the people in the organization, and how they understand and
can support implementation of the strategy.
>The bottle itself is how customers see the business.

Some businesses seem to have trouble with clarity.  Others do not.

Which would leaders, employees, or customers choose? Which is likely to be healthier?