Let's stop talking about unleashing your company's true potential. Let’s do something about it.
I have created a model outlining the basic requirements for unleashing a company’s true potential. That potential can actually be concretized and simplified.
In the outer perimeter of the figure you find the reframing of your company’s potential from Chapter 2. That’s the potential you are going to unleash.
The true starting point represents the actual initiation of the work to unleash the true potential − the company's real performance and its collective organizational capacity. All these factors may constitute a strong foundation for growth, but they may also be far too weak and require vast improvements and changes, if they are going to succeed in exploiting the business opportunities of the future. The true destination is the long-term goal, and is the next milestone in unleashing the potential. The true core is your basic ability and vital driving force for succeeding in unleashing your potential.
Do not regard the reinterpretations as yet another concept and additional statements that need to be implemented throughout your organization.
The reinterpretation raises the awareness of your company's potential and allows you to develop its new strategy to unleash the potential. If you fail to incorporate the company’s true potential when working with your business strategy, the existing business will continue unchanged. If you want to take the step from frivolous talk about the potential to actually unleashing it, then that potential must be the focal point of your strategic work.
The outer perimeter of the figure also indicates the need to succeed in achieving the most efficient utilization of the company's current platform as well as the innovative exploration of new opportunities. Value must be created and money must be earned in the short term in order to create much more value and earn much more money in the long term. It’s not either or, but both and. This is the kind of duality in your leadership that will actually unleash the potential.
Inside the perimeter of the figure you see the company’s vision, mission, identity and culture – what I call the company’s DNA, the company’s fundamental self-perception, meaning and essence.
It’s vital to redefine your company’s DNA so it can serve as inspiration and drive the unleashing of the company’s true potential. Your company’s current vision, mission, identity and culture are based on a continuation of your company’s existing successful business.
Merely expanding the company’s DNA to reach towards future opportunities is insufficient. The DNA must be delimited and exceptional in order to drive the valuable differentiation of the new business activities. Delimiting and differentiating the company’s activities provide the best opportunities for successfully unleashing the potential.
The company’s true potential is not all-comprehensive but includes the products and services that create additional value for your customers and differentiate your company from your competitors; they are also the ones you produce and distribute most successfully.
There is no reason to believe that an ordinary, unremarkable or all-embracing company can generate extraordinary and successful activities.
Your company’s DNA must therefore be just as unique, ambitious and focused as the unleashing of the true potential requires.