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Is Your Strategy Top-Down, Bottom-Up Or Sideways?
What drives your strategy impacts your culture and how your company performs. Matching the approach to strategy with the end goal is a leadership challenge.
Strategy may be one of the most overused words in business. For fans of Michael Porter, it’s about creating a competitive advantage. But in reality, for most organizations, it can sometimes feel more like planning for business as usual. Therein lies a problem.
Whether or not they are top of mind, we rely on strategies for our businesses to succeed. Strategies are more than plans; they impact our culture, and the approaches we take to manage and lead. Yet all too often, the approach leaders use is whichever is comfortable for them — which doesn’t match the strategy with the needs of the business unit or, more broadly, the organization. Having the ability to match a strategic approach with business challenges is what makes a leader adaptive.
In general, we can group these strategic approaches into three camps: top-down, sideways, and bottom-up. Let’s explore these three approaches, when they work, and when they might not.
Top-down strategies dictate to control
Top-down strategies help keep people aligned toward a common goal — if the path to get there is clear.
