A company’s best strategists are its employees
External knowledge is also available to competitors
The basic management assumption is that employees are not qualified to be strategists and that they should therefore not be assigned strategic functions. As a result companies spend enormous sums to acquire external consultants‘ knowledge and fail to utilize the capabilities of their own employees.
This approach has two fatal consequences:
- on the employees‘ motivation and willingness to implement the strategy;
- regarding the development of a company-specific, unique competitive advantage. The external expert’s knowledge is also available to competitors.
The result is that different companies‘ strategies are becoming more and more similar.
Utilizing employees‘ knowledge
Every good strategy builds on its knowledge of markets, products, technologies and especially customers. Without this knowledge, strategic reasoning becomes a purely theoretical exercise.
This knowledge includes the current state of the company and especially changes concerning customers and competitors that influence customer decisions.
And where is this knowledge located? With its employees:
- the sales staff are the people who best know the customers – and the competitors;
- the technicians and product managers are the people who best know the products;
- the service staff are the people who best know the problems and areas of application;
- … and really involved employees are the best innovators.