I’ve worked in many businesses. From the startup environment to the decades-old business with years of legacy clients. And if someone were to ask me, “What do you think the difference between a successful company and a non-successful company is,” I would say that the differentiator is in one particular area: long-term organizational strategy.

In my experience, hyper-focused businesses that set long-term goals and create an organizational strategy are arguably more successful than their unorganized counterparts. 

This is a hill that I will die on, and more and more businesses are starting to join my viewpoint and see the importance of building out these long-term goals. 

If your business is one of the unorganized, no long-term strategy types, there is a way back to the path of goal setting. Building out your vision mission value (VMV), establishing company goals, communicating strategy across your company, and getting the wheel turning, is where you need to start — and this article will help you with the first push. 

Understanding organizational strategy 

Organizational strategy refers to a company’s long-term plan of action that is built to achieve its goals and objectives. Frankly speaking, it is more than a single slice of pie – it’s the entire thing.

An example of a “slice” would be this: “We want to increase our widget production by 10% next quarter.” 

An example of an “entire pie” would be this: “We want to become the leading provider of widgets in the next five years.”

See the difference? In the first example, the goal is only short-term. It only considers a few months, and while 10% growth is great, it is just a metric you would want to hit on the way to the entire “pie,” or your long-term action plan.

The second example is a better strategy. It is long-term (five years), specific (leading provider), measurable (today vs. five years from now) and directs the entire organization. This would be a successful organizational strategy because it would touch every part of your business, and use all of its resources to achieve the desired outcome. 

This would be an effective organizational strategy since it would involve all departments, from R&D to marketing. 

Use VMV to position your company within the market 

Don’t let your eyes glaze over with another acronym here–stay the course and learn about the importance of building your vision mission value (VMV).

VMV is the shorthand way to combine three specific guidelines you need to establish for your company: a clear vision, mission, and value. A strong VMV can position your company within the market and provide a solid foundation for decision-making and growth.  

Do you have a VMV set up for your company?

If you still need to set up your business VMV, brainstorm and start immediately. Your VMV is the backbone of your company, and it will help guide your business, what you stand for, and what your future might hold. Start by individually building out each of the prompts below:

Your Vision: Sets your company’s direction and ultimate goal.

Your Mission: Outlines how you plan to achieve that goal. 

Your Value: The guiding principles that shape your company’s culture and behavior. 

You need to first create and align your VMV before you can move on to creating your long-term business goals or strategy. When you have your VMV created, and the needs and desires of your target audience, you can differentiate yourself from competitors and begin to build long-term loyalty with customers. 

Establishing long-term goals and objectives to align with your VMV

Your VMV set up makes setting up long-term goals and objectives that much easier. While it can be difficult to set these strategies up, there are tactics that you can follow to create and reach your long-term goals such as:

• Breaking down long-term goals into smaller, measurable milestones
• Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) goals
• Conduct regular internal reviews of goals progress progress
• Adjust goals as needed
• Involve employees in the goal-setting process

Using some of these tactics will help you continue to move toward completing your long-term goals and make sure that they continue to align with your VMV and overall organizational strategy.

Why you should lean on management tools to track and streamline your goals

A successful business requires long-term planning and a lot of organization. Remember the successful companies I worked for earlier?  Yeh–most of those companies were legacy businesses that put the Capital S in Strategy. 

There is a reason that many businesses have been around for decades, and it’s more than just product offerings.

It’s taking advantage of new tools and techniques and leaning into technology. 

Business owners are so wrapped up in the minutia and day-to-day of business running that using a project management system is the obvious answer to help employees collaborate and stay on top of tasks. 

Stakeholders might not have the time to pull data and check into a project and progress. However, using a project management system or goal-tracking tool, these high-level stakeholders can quickly check in, identify problems, and get high-level information to help make big decisions.

Using a project management tool, you have the ability to constantly evaluate and adapt your management techniques, and businesses can continue to grow and thrive in a competitive marketplace. Want to test it out for yourself? Hive offers a free 14-day trial so you can see the power of project management and goal-tracking for your organization. 

Your VMV might not always stay the same – and that’s okay

As a business owner, I started my company all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I set up my VMV, and I had my 5-year goal laid out for what I wanted to accomplish. 

Flash forward five years. My business model completely changed; my delivery methods are different, and the team I work with couldn’t have been more different than I had started. While I set my organizational goals and built out a VMV, I realized two very important things. 1) That I strayed from setting and sticking to my VMV (from lack of successful organizational tracking methods), and 2) The market forced me to change my goals. 

While you can, and should, set up as many long-term goals that align with your VMV as possible, if you do not track your progress or adjust your business methods, you can easily derail. Using myself as an example, if you are not laser-focused on what you want your long-term goals to be for your business, you leave yourself vulnerable to stray without even realizing it.

To ensure that you stay the course, always organize your long-term goals in a goal-setting platform, and check in on them every quarter. Don’t just create your goals and hope that in 5 or even 10 years that you will hit them.  Market pressures, team pressures, and even a light wind can derail your progress, so stay actively engaged and focused on your long-term goals. 

It’s no longer enough to have a great idea or product – you need strategy 

As the current business environment and demands continue to evolve, it’s no longer enough to have a great idea or product – but your business needs to focus on the future as well. This future is in creating a successful organizational strategy that builds out a long-term plan to achieve goals and objectives. You must build out a clear VMV and closely develop long-term goals and objectives that align with it, using tactics such as breaking down long-term goals into measurable milestones, setting SMART goals, and involving employees in the goal-setting process.

Don’t get discouraged if your strategy changes or adjusts as time goes on, that’s normal. Just use a project management platform so you will never be shocked by any changes that occur. The last thing your business needs is to find yourself up the creek without a paddle.