Every great company benefits from clear vision and leadership. The dynamics of an organization’s culture is set at the top, and it is the job of every CEO to connect and inspire people to effectively move toward a common strategic goal.
Here are 3 reasons why every CEO should have a strategic narrative that outlines the current state of the industry, vision for the category and role the organization will play to advance the overall good of the industry.
- Alignment: having an over-arching industry narrative provides a common cause for an entire organization to strive toward. With clear direction of how an organization will lead its industry forward, product/service development, marketing, sales and support can align efforts to achieve a common goal.
- Influence the Influencers: industry influencers – the media and industry/financial analysts both, have the most respect and, subsequently, provide the most favorable coverage to companies that are actively leading their respective markets. CEO’s that have a unique take on the market, and a vision for where it’s going, engage at a more strategic level and often see their own narrative played back to the market via news coverage, inclusion in industry articles and research reports.
- Lead the Market: as they say, “all ships rise with the tide.” This is invariably true for leading companies that take a conscious and active role in advancing the overall good of the industry. Market winners are market leaders, and having an industry narrative that outlines something new and aspirational for the category gets noticed, creates a market-leading position and differentiates a company from competitors.
Those of us in marketing also can feed off of executive vision as well, and we thrive when it is consistent, clear and apparent. Marketing campaigns supported by executive vision have focus and meaning, and are not reduced to pure tactics. Simply put, companies that have a common focus and cause are proactively leading the market, are inspired to achieve greatness and attract the best employees, partners and customers.
In today’s era of push-button digital and social marketing don’t lose sight of the power and value of a great executive industry vision. Make it part of your company’s overall narrative and move from “market leader’ to a “market driver.”
