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The Essence of Business

To be great an organisation needs a wide vision and a narrow focus; then to align all aspects of its business to make the organisation strong where it matters.

Vision

Vision is a ‘rich picture’ of what the organisation could be like 5 to 10 years out. It describes what we are trying to achieve and where we are trying to go. Good visions are challenging ... ‘big bold and ugly’. They need to excite the youngest recruit, reflect passion, identify competitive space, kindle a fire of pride, have the ‘wow’ factor and no-one may yet know how to achieve it.

Focus

The Value Proposition is the 'package' of value offered to potential clients/consumers relating to all the tangible and intangible elements that they want, need, value, and will undergo cost to achieve or buy. There are basically only three types of package or value propositions and it's really important to choose which is right for you.

This is one of the major tools to help you narrow your focus. It’s a bit like the big spotlights that used to shine into the skies during the Blitz in London. All the firepower in the world is relatively useless unless all the guns are pointing at the target caught in the light. Business is the same, all the skills and resources in the world are relatively useless unless they are all pointing in the same direction where it will make the most difference.

Alignment

Once you have narrowed your target, Alignment shows you how to line up all the horsepower in your organisation behind your Value proposition. Alignment is like the focused beam of light generated by a laser. Ordinarily, incoherent light consists of waves in of many frequencies, in all phases, and moving in all directions. Light waves in a laser beam are coherent, organised in the same frequency in phase, and traveling in the same direction. This gives the laser the power to cut through even very dense materials.