Page 191 - Successful Onboarding

“Limited Upside in Flying Blind”: Driving Strategic Insight • 175

Kevan Scholes, and Richard Whittington in their textbook Exploring
Corporate Strategy: “Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization
over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment
through its configuration of resources and competencies with the aim of
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fulfilling stakeholder expectations.” Working with this definition a bit, we
believe that firms should communicate two basic points about their strat-
egy to new hires as part of onboarding: The firm’s “win plan” for succeed-
ing in its markets, and the “operating conditions.” This win plan should
include information about the intended direction and scope of the organ-
ization as well as the advantages these yield relative to stakeholder expec-
tations. The “operating conditions” that feed into the strategy refers
specifically to information about the firm’s markets and competitors (the
environment) and its suppliers (resources and competencies). For each of
these two broad areas (“win plan” and “operating conditions”), the point is
to convey necessary information rather than engage new hires in an
extended process of analyzing, critiquing, or forming the firm’s strategy.
This information needs to be conveyed as it applies at the corporate, busi-
ness unit, functional and task levels (a configuration mirroring Mark’s daily
Häagen-Dazs delivery report).
Talking about the “win plan” means alerting new hires to the organiza-
tion’s targets or desired outcomes—goals such as increasing market share,
profit margin, and the like. It also means talking about how the organiza-
tion hopes to achieve these goals. A medical device company might discuss
as its win plan getting more customer share by increasing the size of the
sales force so that the firm can spend twice as much time with doctors as
the leading competitor. An alternate win plan might involve spending twice
as much as the leading competitor on R&D to develop a technically
advanced product. Another win plan might focus on outspending the com-
petition on clinical trials to create superior proof points on product
performance. Still another win plan might involve outspending in a direct-
to-consumer marketing campaign designed to create end-patient demand
for the product segment and product brand. These are four different strate-
gies for increasing revenue and ultimately share. If you came onboard as a
new hire who followed the first strategy, and your old firm had been fol-
lowing the second, then you’d probably find the tactics of your new
employer confusing and even misguided unless someone at your new