Unlocking Business Growth: 5 Essential Strategy Models for Innovative Leaders
In the business world, innovation and growth are the keys to staying ahead of the competition. Business leaders need effective strategies to drive their companies forward, whether entrepreneurs or seasoned CEOs.
Many business strategy models help leaders make these vital decisions with confidence and conviction. Whether leaders are iterating on existing solutions or pioneering completely new change, these models can be used independently or combined to guide and frame action.
Here are 5 models that should be in every business leader's toolkit as they navigate their organisation to success.
1. Porter's 5 Forces: Uncovering Industry Opportunities
An organisation's level of competitiveness depends on the environment it operates within. Porter's 5 Forces Model is a powerful tool for assessing the competitive landscape of an industry, helping businesses identify opportunities and challenges. The model examines five forces: industry competition, potential new entrants, supplier power, customer power, and the threat of substitute products.
This information forges a competitive advantage because it highlights where the profitability lies and what the company should focus its efforts on. By understanding these forces, business leaders can craft a winning corporate strategy that capitalises on its strengths and weaknesses.
However, use it with caution. This strategic model relies on known information about the industry, meaning the resulting evaluation could become out of date quickly in an ever-changing environment. Also, it lacks widespread applicability as not all businesses can be neatly categorised into just one industry.
2. BCG Matrix: Streamlining Product Portfolios for Growth
Business leaders need to ensure that all products are worth funnelling resources into. While a multi-product profile can be profitable, it can also be challenging to manage. The Boston Consulting Group's Product Portfolio Matrix (BCG Matrix) can answer this question with a product portfolio analysis.
Products are categorised into four groups: dogs, question marks, stars, and cash cows. Low growth and low market share products are known as dog products, high growth and low market share as question mark products, high growth and high market share as star products, and low growth and high market share as cash cows. This analysis helps companies determine which products to invest in, where growth opportunities lie, and which products to discontinue. This ensures an efficient but powerful product profile is maintained.
It's particularly useful for highly innovative businesses that invest in developing new products to meet emerging customer needs. For accurate insights, it is an exercise that will need to be repeated due to the variability of the market.
3. Porter's Diamond Model: Assessing Global Expansion Potential
Growing and successful businesses often consider expanding their operations to other locations. It's a massive strategic decision that could make or break the business; many companies are highly competitive locally or nationally but struggle on the international stage.
The model considers factors such as firm strategy, structure, rivalry, factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, government support, and a chance to determine whether expansion is the right decision and whether they are ready to compete on the global stage.
And even if it's not ready, this model forces the business to develop to meet emerging customer needs and stay ahead of local competitors, preparing them for the intensity of a foreign market.
Here, leaders can see how their local environment influences their competitiveness and innovation capabilities and how much of this capability can transcend globally. Coupling this with the impacts of globalisation and digitisation can help determine whether entering a foreign market is viable.
4. Gernier Theory: Navigating Growth Stages and Challenges
Businesses go through multiple stages of growth, starting as small founder-dominated organisations and developing into large conglomerates. Gernier's theory helps leaders pre-empt and navigate the inevitable challenges at each stage of their growth journey by highlighting resistances that must be overcome.
As companies progress through these stages – creativity, direction, delegation, coordination and control, and cooperation and alliances – the primary source of leadership shifts, and so does the nature of the organisation. As the business outgrows each stage, changes must be made to meet the emerging needs and priorities of the team.
This model helps leaders make informed decisions based on their company's current stage and challenges. However, leaders must factor in the uniqueness of a company's situation; this model does not provide specific timelines for each stage and assumes that organisational size will increase as the company matures.
5. Herzberg Hygiene Theory: Boosting Employee Experience for Success
The success of a business relies on its people, and innovative leaders are increasingly embracing the importance of the employee experience. The Herzberg Hygiene Theory offers a framework for understanding and improving this by identifying the motivational factors that increase satisfaction and hygiene factors that reduce dissatisfaction.
Motivational factors that increase satisfaction include job advancement, responsibility, recognition and achievement. On the other hand, hygiene factors that decrease job dissatisfaction include interpersonal relations, salary, supervision and working conditions.
By leveraging this analysis, business leaders can make data-driven decisions using real and qualified data to improve employee happiness and retention. However, the subjective nature of human experiences means that the human experience can rarely be accurately distilled into a singular model, so qualitative data should also be utilised.
Strategic decision-making is critical for business success in a dynamic and competitive environment. Whether considering maximising profits by entering a foreign market and adding a new product or searching for ways to optimise the current business operations through a deeper understanding of the industry and growth of the business, these strategic models support that decision-making. Combined insights from these models can provide a solid foundation for driving business success and gaining a competitive edge.
