Function Strategy
Aligning and prioritising function activities, capabilities and investments with the strategy of the business.
Four things a function strategy needs to have in place.
1. Clearly Defined Activities.
Do you have a set of well-articulated activities which you offer to your business units?
2. Partnership Dialogue With Business Leaders.
Do you regularly review how your function delivers competitive advantage for your business?
3. Benchmarked Capabilities.
Have you identified a relevant best in class organisation and benchmarked your capabilities to establish insights for your function’s performance improvements?
4. Aligned Strategic Choices.
Have you made clear choices about the activities in which you will build additional performance capabilities and in the activities which you will drive further efficiency?
Challenges For Functions
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- Are they subservient?
- Do they take an autocratic approach?
- Or are they a vital engine for your organisation?
Have any of your functions become unloved and lost their way?
Do the activities of your functions focus primarily on those that are strategically important to the enterprise and that add value?
- Or are they predominantly transactional in nature?
Over the last five years, Market Focus has worked with large numbers of industrial clients with a turnover of £300m to £10bn and helped them develop more than 60 function strategies including R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Product Management Finance, Communications, IT and HR.
Here is just one of the comments made by the VP of a technology function who we worked with.
Persistent but very respectful … this helps engage and empower the full team.
Clarity … the process ensures you cover everything and that there are no loose ends.”
He offers the following advice to anyone contemplating working with Market Focus.
“Only embark if you are serious about making change.
Expect to be challenged… and don’t expect it to be comfortable all the time… I believe there can be no excellence if you stick to your comfort zone!
Be prepared for a very intense process. You will need stamina. But prioritise to make sure the pace is stretching but still in reach of your team’s abilities.”
If you would like to learn more about what the academic and business world are saying about the importance of function strategies and to read examples of where Market Focus has provided expertise and practical help, please follow the links below.
Situation 1
“Servile functions do everything the business wants but nothing very well. They cannot keep up with all of the demands made on them.
Imperial functions serve themselves and their own interests rather than their customers. Business units become frustrated and often turn to outsourcing solutions to satisfy their strategic needs.
When functions become vital engines, they align their actions to the overall business strategy so they can more effectively allocate resources, and dramatically enhance the competitive value they can provide.”
These are observations made by Roger L Martin and Jennifer Riel in their article titled ‘The One Thing You Need To Know About Managing Functions’ which was published in the HBR in July-August 2019.
Click here for the link to this article – note a subscription to HBR is required.
Request an example (details below) of how one company turned the situation around from an autocratic IT function to a value adding partner to the organisation.
Situation 2
“It is rarely the case that a function leader does not want to do the right thing. More commonly the problem lies in the design or implementation of the strategy for their function.”
These are observations made in the article ‘How To Get Your Functions To Supercharge Your Strategy’ by Jo Whitehead, Director of Ashridge Strategic Management Centre and Anita Hunt and Debbie Rogerson, consultants at Market Focus Consulting.
Click here for the link to this article.
Request an example (details below) of how a technology function had become so unloved that they found that to survive they had to focus on using their capabilities to deliver value to external companies. Market Focus helped them to turn this round to become a key function to the corporation whose added value was clearly understood by everyone.
Situation 3
“Function leaders are now expected to play a stronger role at the heart of strategic decision making; they are not just operators of a service bureau, but critical enablers of the capabilities that set a particular company apart from its competitors.”
These are observations made by Deniz Caglar, Namit Kapoor and Thomas Ripsam in their report titled ‘The New Functional Agenda’ published by Booz & Company in 2012.
Click here for the link to this article.
Request an example (details below) of how Market Focus facilitated the process where a transactional product support function reviewed their strategic priorities and realised they needed to invest in activities and skills in which the company’s external customers had a huge need and which could become a winning part of the business’s overall value proposition for many of their industrial customers.
Request an example (details below) of how Market Focus facilitated the process where a transactional product support function reviewed their strategic priorities and realised they needed to invest in activities and skills in which the company’s external customers had a huge need and which could become a winning part of the business’s overall value proposition for many of their industrial customers.
If you’d like to read about key outcomes of a successful function strategy and/or practical examples of companies who addressed these challenges, please provide your details below.
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