What is your Company’s “TRUE NORTH”?

I just went through an exercise that I would recommend each and every one of you try.

I interviewed the entire management team the company that I'm consulting for and asked each member of management what they thought are true business paths was. I found these interviews very enlightening and was not surprised when I received seven completely different answers from six people. Even the company president was unable to give me an accurate response. Every member of this team responded what they thought the company's focus was but even the president's response varied from the ownership’s perspective.

 Every individual had a very narrow focus of what they thought the business model should be and this affected their daily actions, their hiring processes, their projects, their metrics and methodologies. I quickly realized that the company had become very factional as departments with similar direction partnered against those who did not have the same business point of view as they did. The president of the organization was then forced to focus his efforts on maintaining the foundation of his organization rather than defining strategic plans.

In short sales had one goal, accounting had another credit is followings sales, and collections is bitching about everything after the fact.

How often do we see these types of things within our own organizations?

I suggested to the ownership that they determine the exact type of business that they want their portfolio and that they determine, very specifically the path that they wished their company to take. I have learned in subsequent meetings that there was a definite deviation between the ownership of the company and the president, who is in charge of communicating and developing any type of strategic planning. 

At the highest level the company had not found their “True North”.

When you define what your company's true North is you then have the ability to prioritize all of your efforts in comparison to your strategic plan. This also will eliminate any faction tendencies shown by a company. If everybody is using the same compass and looking towards the same North, it is far more difficult to deviate or stray from the path. 

Another benefit, which I will blog about later, of determining your “True North” is that it allows you to “trim the fat”. Any goal or project that is not aligned with this direction will become immediately superfluous and any wasted energy partnered with that goal can then be re-targeted

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Do you know what your company’s "True North" is?