Organizations today invest significant time, energy, and financial resources into crafting brilliant corporate strategies. While having articulated strategies is a critical business practice, for an organization to truly earn long-term strategic success, strong strategic leaders are needed at every level in the business. These leaders must develop corporate strategy and create supporting policies for the business’ value chain.
What Is Corporate Strategy?
Corporate strategy is a long-term, high-level direction and plan to win designed to help an organization gain a competitive advantage and achieve sustained success.
A well-defined and executed corporate strategy can shift a business’ trajectory and solidify a healthy future for the company or organization.
Who Develops Corporate Strategy?
Corporate strategy will only be as effective as the individual parts contributing to it. Therefore, many supporting strategies must be aligned with the corporate strategy. This is exactly what CMOE’s workshop helps leaders achieve.
CMOE’s Strategic Leadership Workshop is designed to help leaders master corporate strategy development. It will help them formulate and execute strategies, initiatives, and plans that align with their organization’s corporate strategy.
While CMOE believes that strategy is everyone’s job, leaders have a substantial responsibility to execute the corporate strategy. That way, they can stay relevant and serve as a competitive advantage for the firm.
How to Develop a Corporate Strategy in a Workshop
Leaders who participate in CMOE’s Strategic Leadership Workshop will increase their ability to develop and execute corporate strategy. Participants in the program will learn how to:
- Align business units and functions around a clearly defined corporate strategy.
- Apply fundamental strategy concepts and principles used to create a corporate strategy and develop a plan to win within the organization’s value chain and functional units.
- Set strategic direction for their area of responsibility that contributes to and aligns with the corporation.
- Articulate a clear and compelling strategic direction to their team, cascade the strategy, and leverage core capabilities around the corporate or functional strategy.
- Create a competitive advantage for the organization by building strategies to ensure each business function adapts as the organization and market shift.
- Increase their strategic awareness and combine it with their operational experience.
- Keep their part of the business relevant and add long-term value to the organization and the corporate strategy.
- Align business operations, talent, and resources around strategic priorities.
- Utilize strategic thinking and leadership practices with everyday activities and strategic efforts.
- Contribute strategically important knowledge to the organization so that strategy also filters up.
CMOE’s Strategic Leadership Workshop combines the best and most current thinking on strategy with timeless leadership principles in a highly engaging and practical development experience.
Using an interactive and dynamic strategy simulation, leaders learn important corporate strategy principles and concepts. For example, they may clearly define how they intend to achieve key strategic goals that will help the organization achieve strategic success.
Learn More About the Strategic Leadership Workshop
Why Is Corporate Strategy Important?
A corporate strategy encourages business leaders to aim for and achieve long-term success. While the day-to-day and quarterly objectives are essential to any organization, the business is susceptible to misalignment if these goals are not tied to a bigger picture.
- Only 29% of workforce members express that their leader’s vision is aligned with the company’s.
- “Aligned businesses grow revenue 58% faster” and are 72% more profitable than their counterparts.
Thus, corporate strategy lines up strategy, objectives, and purpose. This helps leaders concentrate less on what to do and more on simply doing, elevating focus and efficiency.
What Are the Key Components in a Corporate Strategy?
There are four components to a corporate strategy:
1. Vision: A vision describes how the organization plans to evolve in the future. The vision may address the mission, values, and key areas of the business.
2. Objectives: These objectives explain the organization’s long-term goals (over the next three to five years). Leaders also outline specific steps or milestones the company plans to take to achieve those objectives.
3. Allocation of resources: Resources include workforce and capital. When an organization successfully allocates these resources, it is in a prominent position to achieve its long-term goals and maximize its competitive advantage.
4. Prioritization: This involves evaluating risks and potential returns to prioritize strategic goals. Leaders also tap into the company’s vision, objectives, and resources to determine the level of risk the business can manage for the best return.
What Are the Differences Among Corporate-, Business-, and Functional-Level Strategies?
You can think of corporate strategy standing at the top of business and functional-level strategies:
- A corporate-level strategy is the highest level of strategic planning. It defines a company’s plan for reaching its future goals.
- A business-level strategy establishes objectives for business units or departments. These goals achieve the goals outlined in the corporate strategy.
- A functional-level strategy develops short-term objectives. These short-term goals are milestones that help a company achieve its business and corporate strategy goals.
