about every one of its 37,000 employees could express the
company’s succinct strategy statement: Jones aims to “grow
to 17,000 fi nancial advisers by 2012 [from about 10,000 today]
by offering trusted and convenient face-to-face fi nancial
advice to conservative individual investors who delegate
their fi nancial decisions, through a national network of one-
fi nancial-adviser offi ces.”
Conversely, companies that don’t have a simple and clear
statement of strategy are likely to fall into the sorry category
of those that have failed to execute their strategy or, worse,
those that never even had one. In an astonishing number of
organizations, executives, frontline employees, and all those
in between are frustrated because no clear strategy exists for
the company or its lines of business. The kinds of complaints
that abound in such fi rms include:
“I try for months to get an initiative off the ground, and
then it is shut down because ‘it doesn’t fi t the strategy.’
Why didn’t anyone tell me that at the beginning?”
“I don’t know whether I should be pursuing this market
opportunity. I get mixed signals from the powers that be.”
“Why are we bidding on this customer’s business again?
We lost it last year, and I thought we agreed then not to
waste our time chasing the contract!”
“Should I cut the price for this customer? I don’t know if
we would be better off winning the deal at a lower price