#6 Follow the energy

The biggest disrupter in business today is energy. Energy within your company, and energy delivered to your customers. In most industries, there is an oversupply of great products and services, making your offering merely a hygiene factor. Amazing products are a given. Consequently, your strategy must move beyond product-centricity and offer true and emotionally relevant energy to customers.

Real strategy builds a burning desire and delivers energy.

Dogma core ideas

It is estimated that an inspired employee is 125% more productive than an average employee. While companies with averagely satisfied employees often experience organisational drag and growing complexity, companies that explicitly focus on designing great, relevant and inspiring jobs and are driven by a compelling purpose outperform the competition. Always.

Obviously, the consequence of this is to make sure that the strategic choices we make and the jobs we design always allow employees to shine and excel. If a lawyer’s job is designed in an inspiring, relevant and purposeful way, they will be 125% more productive. If a shop assistant is deeply committed to the overall purpose of the company, they will deliver 125% more energy to customers. And so on.

Imagine your strategy process starting out with a discussion about how the jobs of front-line employees should be designed to ensure the highest possible level of inspiration and motivation. This is step one. It sounds like common sense, but the point is that most companies see inspiration as a consequence of a great strategy, instead of seeing it the other way around. Therefore, building energy and motivation tends to be an afterthought, typically fixed with irrelevant and humiliating KPIs anchored in bureaucratic performance management systems.