One of the things that has been rattling around my head for a while now deals with the most fundamental strategic decision of any business: who you are and why.  Branding certainly takes these elements and weaves a coherent (and hopefully appealing!) story around them but it’s the decision itself that has been intriguing me. 

Sure, you can position a product or service to meet any given niche.  You can start a company to chase a market opportunity – or reposition the company you already have.  But what – strategically – should influence these decisions?  What preternatural self-awareness must a business have to know who it is, what it does, and how it makes its customers’ lives better?

The real question is, “Who is a company?”  It is certainly a product of its founders, and its current employees.  Past employees, events, and decisions affect a business and its culture much like an individual.  Growing up in the Great Depression, for example, keeps my grandmother from wasting food to this day; growing up in the Great Recession might cause a company to place a different emphasis on cash flows, for example, or growth rates. 

A strategic decision for a person (“Do I take this job?”) is similar to one for a company (“Do I make this product?”).  Management scientists would have you believe that companies should be controlled by the spreadsheet.  This is akin to advising your best friend to simply take the highest paying job.  (What if he isn’t good at the skills required?  What if it’s too far away from home?)

Like with a “real life decision,” success comes through knowledge and self-introspection.  Businesses that know and align their people and processes with their purpose for being tend to succeed.  These businesses have engaged the employees that power them to do more of what has made them successful.  They have developed the personality, the story – the brand – of a winner and this brand in turn helps them succeed. 

So my advice to you: take a corporate vision quest and figure out who your business really is… before jumping in to whatever’s next!

–Dan Liska

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