Co-Create Strategy
TL;DR:
Sustainable growth requires moving away from the hero mentality (where a leader dictates strategy alone) to co-create strategy. By acting as a Strategic Convener, rather than a sole decision-maker, leaders tap into the collective intelligence of their organization to build alignment and ensure the company moves as a single unit.
Why Co-Create Strategy
One of the clearest symbols of a co-created strategy first appeared in the year 1155: The Round Table. It was the moment when King Arthur did something pretty radical for a king. Instead of placing himself at the head of a rectangular table to signal rank, he made it round.
No one sat above anyone else.
All knights had an equal voice.
And their strategy was developed collectively.
The result wasn’t just discussion. It was alignment.
King Arthur did the thing we recommend all leaders do: Seek the creativity, knowledge, and expertise from those around them. Arthur was the Strategic Convener. And by convening, collaborating, and discussing, he gained access to the intelligence of Lancelot, Gawain, and Percival to build a moat of collective wisdom and a unified front.
How does this affect a business’s goal of rapid growth? A Harvard Business Review study found that among companies attempting rapid growth, only 29% actually succeeded. The winners didn’t have better products or bigger budgets. They had leadership alignment. They moved as a single unit toward their objectives.
Leadership alignment is when a team shares the same priorities, understands the same constraints, and moves together toward the same goals.
The best way to achieve alignment? Strategize collaboratively.
How to Truly Co-Create Strategy
To move from Hero to Convener, you have to operate on three levels of synchronization:
1. Communication Transparency
This is the Round Table itself, and it feels obvious, but so often it is done poorly.
Co-creating strategy fails when information is siloed.
If business owners are making decisions and making them final before discussing with their leadership team, they’re not collaborating. They’re also not offering up opportunities for alignment. If the knights don't have the same data as the king, they cannot make strategic decisions.
Your goal as a business leader is to eliminate hidden context.
You’ll find that you still will make critical decisions. You will choose the top level objectives for the organization to focus on. The big difference? You’ll have the understanding of where your company is at capacity, on constraints, and you’ll have won buy-in by allowing your leadership team to contribute. It becomes OUR plan, not just YOUR orders.
2. Perspective Iteration
Co-creating strategy uses your leadership team as internal sensors.
When you invite people to partake in growth strategy you see where your internal constraints eating up your business’s time and energy truly are. You stop guessing what’s breaking in operations or marketing and start hearing the live-fire truth from the people running those fronts.
This allows your strategy to become two-fold: Dominate the outside markets and nurture and optimize the internal operation.
3. Synchronized Objective Ownership
There’s a definitive shift when you develop your business strategy as a team.
When your leadership team moves as a single unit, the vision stops being a poster on the wall and starts being a behavioral tool for every decision made in the building.
Start Strategizing Collaboratively
It’s in our name, it’s in our philosophy. CoStrategy is built on the belief of co-creating strategy. It’s where leadership development starts and strategy leads to scale.
Ready to sit at the round table?