Why The Strategic Essence?

Understanding your challenges is the first step to meeting them

Under pressure to succeed?

Feeling responsible for your company’s success or failure? You’ve come to the right place. There’s pressure when you lead a business, especially with how much work needs doing versus the amount of time you have to do it. Pressure to achieve. Pressure to grow a good reputation in the market. And pressure to know exactly how to grow it.

You’re not alone. Research by YouGov and Meta shows that of 1,000 small business leaders, 42% said their top priority in the next 6 months is just to survive. In another study of 116 CEO’s and business leaders, by Roger Jones for the Harvard Business Review, the biggest fear was to be considered incompetent, followed closely by underachieving.

Nowadays, everything is more transparent. With the prevalence of social media and review sites such as Tripadvisor, a small mistake can be magnified, trolls can kick in and suddenly you’re at risk of reputational ruin!

How do you know what to do?

Every company is different. Different foundations, people, aspirations, customers, competitors, markets, trends… And just because you got it right last time, it doesn’t mean it’ll work out this time. Things change. Fast.

The real problem is clarity around what to do next amongst a host of competing priorities. It may feel like you have so much to do, so - naturally - you end up doing the tasks you feel more comfortable with, not really knowing which tasks are actually the ones that will move the dial. 

Prioritising for growth

In the Harvard Business Review, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi state that 64% of executives report they have too many priorities. They also reveal that as the priority list grows, company revenue declines. Those with 1-3 priorities were most likely to say that they had achieved above average revenue growth.

So how do you know what your 1-3 priorities are? The ones that will move the dial? The report also shows that when the company’s differentiating capabilities are fully aligned with their strategy - focusing investment, effort and attention - they’re three times as likely to report above average revenue growth.

Finding your focus to succeed

That is why it’s so important to know exactly what to focus on. Finding that focus is what we call The Strategic Essence. The essence of the business that forms the basis of your strategy. Your springboard to growth. The Strategic Essence tells you exactly what to prioritise and spotlights the direction of all business activity.

Your unique Strategic Essence

Each business will have a Strategic Essence unique to them. It comes from knowing the company’s roots, why it exists in the first place, what’s important to the owners and where it wants to be. Go back to basics, understand where it has come from and stay aligned. Know your customer, their pain points, the problem you are solving for them. Then understand your marketplace, what the competitors are doing, how you are different, what space you can occupy. This is how you can truly differentiate yourself and be proud of your offering: knowing exactly what it’s doing, who for, and why.

Most agencies call this the ‘value proposition’, which simply doesn’t do justice to its power. It has the potential to redefine your company's trajectory. The Strategic Essence is your business distilled into a single, uncompromising focus - one sentence, with no ‘and’ and no comma. It is the catalyst that aligns every decision, drives every action and unlocks growth. It is your key to becoming one of those rare companies with 1-3 priorities and the capability to fully support them - to be three times more likely to be reporting above average revenue growth. Without it, you’re just guessing. With it, you have the clarity to grow and the strategy to win.

Find yours.