Strategy: Why so many perspectives?

Doing Strategy

• Doing Strategy: How it all fits together
• Doing Strategy: What’s in a Strategy?
• Strategy: Starting with Why
• Are “Guiding Principles” the same as a “Strategy”?
• Strategy: Why so many perspectives?
• Reading List: Ishmael, An adventure of the Mind and Spirit

A key part of the business strategy for most banks is to become more customer-oriented.  Some banks are accomplishing this by giving increasing control to executives who are responsible for broad customer segments.   These customer-segment-oriented strategies (I call them “segment strategies“) are an important part of the bank’s business model.

Segment strategies impact the bank’s operating model and these impacts end up in the bank’s enterprise target operating model (TOM).  Due to the complexity of the enterprise TOM, subordinate TOMs are sometimes created for areas of focus such as branches, CRM, digital channels, processing centers, product areas, etc.  Each of these subordinate TOMs might have its own executive sponsorship and leadership.

When you multiply the number of customer segments times the number of TOMs you get a lot of communication paths that must be intact in order to formulate a holistic strategy.