For a business growth strategy to work, it must resonate with the people who execute it. This demands both shared values and an authentic purpose from your team.
Your business must engage people across all organizational levels. But doing so takes a methodical and conscientious effort to unify business priorities. You need to deliver workplace transparency, cooperative collaboration, and aligned incentives.
When done well, these principles align the entire organization and get everyone working together toward a shared goal. This growth strategy guide offers tips and best practices to achieve this desirable organizational dynamic.
Resolving Business Priorities
Competing and conflicting business priorities among your team can significantly restrict business growth. In some cases, workplace engagement initiatives can resolve these issues. But some situations demand a more comprehensive rethink of how to solve such challenges.
One popular strategy is to establish a common set of principle-based ground rules. These would govern employee interactions and help workers make decisions and resolve disagreements. Amazon’s Leadership Principles are a great example of how such ground rules can impact your growth strategy. Major aspects of this approach include:
- Involvement and commitment to the principles at all levels of the organization
- Shaping the growth mindset and culture of the organization
- Elevated performance standards and stated expectations
- Thinking big and earning the trust and confidence of the teams they head
Another well-known approach uses a dispute system design (DSD). According to the DSD model, management-level personnel should actively work to prevent conflicts and step in as soon as one arises. Harvard Law School researchers have associated DSD with benefits such as:
- Higher levels of employee morale
- More successful employee retention outcomes
- Fewer lawsuits
Basic approaches to DSD involve four steps:
- Identify Symptoms of Disputes: Analyze the disputes that tend to arise in your organization. Look for patterns that may reveal systemic issues you can then address as part of your overall growth strategy.
- Apply the Principles of DSD: Try to resolve conflicts before they intensify. Use tools like mediation and open discussion to address issues in an open, collaborative manner.
- Create a DSD-Based Dispute Resolution System: When conflicts escalate, you’ll need a structured dispute resolution system. A committee approach, with members from different departments, ensures even representation throughout the organization.
- Perform Regular Evaluations and Reviews: Once the system is in place, conduct regular reviews of its efficiency. The system should promote transparency and empower employees to come forward.
How Transparency With Your Growth Strategy Can Help
Organizational transparency plays a critical role in your business growth strategy. But to be effective, growth initiatives can’t be reactive or limited to a certain time of year. Instead, they should be integrated into regular operations on an everyday basis.
Success in this requires regular and open communication between departmental leaders and other key internal stakeholders. Openness and transparency set the stage for effective communication.
Operational transparency can also underpin culture shifts that support your growth strategy. For instance, some organizations are dominated by people intent on getting recognition for their individual efforts. That is, regardless of its effects on collegiality. But transparency fosters internal collectivism, in which individual achievements carry value because they advance broader organizational goals.
What’s more, transparency goes hand-in-hand with integrity. Businesses should consciously work to establish integrity and advance it at every opportunity. This involves open and unerring honesty. Honor your word and position the business as a partner in its employees’ lives, rather than a machine designed to make as much money as possible.
Finally, note the importance of follow-through and consistency. Integrity and trust can take a long time to build but only a moment to destroy.
Leverage Collaboration Within Your Growth Strategy
Collaborative approaches to internal decision-making are critical to advance an effective growth strategy that can unify your entire organization. Without an effective collaborative framework in place, businesses run the risk of becoming siloed. Departments and divisions can become isolated from one another, with each working to advance its own objectives instead of acting in the wider interests of the entire organization.
Transparency and open communication are two important ways to foster a collaborative organizational culture. You can also use these best practices:
- Establish a clear, consistent, and accountable set of objectives and responsibilities for specific team members or departments.
- Use more personal modes of communication, such as voice calls or video conferencing, to connect team members who work remotely.
- Create centralized, easily accessible knowledge bases for personnel to draw on.
When done well, these types of collaborative frameworks can dramatically improve business efficiency and build cross-departmental trust. Both benefits directly support your growth strategy.
Align Incentives With Business Goals
No matter how great your growth strategy is, if departments and individuals aren’t incentivized to achieve that strategy, it will fail. The projects and performances within your organization must align with your business goals. Otherwise, you end up with siloed and self-oriented activities that don’t move your growth strategy forward.
These strategies can help you achieve harmonized, collaboration-focused outcomes from an organizational standpoint:
Clearly Communicate Business Objectives
Make sure employees know what your overarching business goals are. This will give each contributor a clear understanding of how their contributions help organizational progress. As a result, you’ll boost morale and motivate employees to improve their performance.
Reward Desired Behaviors
Team-based and individual incentives should reward the kinds of behaviors that move the business closer to its goals. For instance, you might tie incentives like bonuses to work that fits within your growth strategy. Or you could offer additional compensation to staff who participate in advanced training programs that lead to your goals.
Align Incentive Timelines With Schedules
Short-term incentive programs generally work best when they’re tied to a specific one-off project or objective. Think achieving a duration-specific sales target during a high-volume time of year like Black Friday or the Christmas shopping season. Meanwhile, quarterly and annual bonus programs tend to be more successful when they’re tied to long-term or perennial business objectives.
Get Help to Solve Your Growth Strategy Challenges
Some businesses struggle to identify the internal dynamics that impede their growth strategy. Or they don’t know where to start when trying to address them. UpTop uses a structured process to help businesses achieve higher levels of harmonious internal alignment and build the confidence they need to succeed.
An objective, outside perspective can help uncover barriers to growth that you might fail to see or struggle to solve. UpTop can help; contact us to learn more.
