Executive Summary

Nowadays, there are few executives that can express their strategy in a few words.
Having a well-understood statement of strategy could balance the behavior inside the company
since everyone in the firm could make individual decisions that could fortify one another.
Moreover, companies that well-explained strategies are the most successful in their industry. For
instance, the brokerage firm Edward Jones has multiplied its share market since it has achieved
that every employee could express and understand the company’s strategy which is to increase
to 17,000 financial advisers by 2012 by offering a comfortable face-to-face financial advice to
conservative investors who manage their financial choices by creating a national network of one-
financial-adviser offices.
Unfortunately, firms that do not have any statement of strategy are characterized as
failures because they failed to carry out a strategy since no everybody in the firm cannot
internalize as guidance for making difficult choices or never create one. Most of executives do
not have any idea what are all the elements of strategy statement. By having knowledge about
these elements, the creation of strategies would be easier to implement and communicate. Mike
Rukstad established three important elements in order to generate an adequate strategy statement:
objective, scope, and advantage.
First of all, objective consists on expressing the purpose of the strategy, and it should
include the end point, and the time frame for reaching it. The main features of the strategic
objective is that is specific, measurable, and time bound. The intention of establishing a strategic
objective is to encourage the business over years. The objective can change the direction of the
business. For example, Boeing’s main goal was to be the largest firm in the aircraft industry, but
the company changed its goal to be the most profitable, so that change make the company to
restructure the entire firm from sales to manufacturing. Secondly, the scope focuses on
determining the landscape where the company will operate. In the case of Edward Jones, the
important element were customers; therefore, the company spent time and effort to identify the
needs of every type of clients. Finally, the advantage is the essence of strategy because
represents the idea of why the company is a better choice compared to its competitors. The
competitive advantage is compound by two parts. The first part is the statement of the customer
value proposition which is a map where it is assessed the value proportion against competitors to
visualize what makes the company distinctive, and the second part of the statement of advantage
represents the activities that permit the firm to fulfill the customer value preposition. Considering
The Edward Jones’s Activity-System Map that reflects that the firm’s value proposition is to
offer comfortable, personal service and advice, and the particular aspect of the firm is that it has
only one financial adviser in an office which permit it to have more offices than rivals do, and
also Jones opened offices in rural areas instead of high-rise buildings.
After implementing the three elements of creating a strategy statement, now it is time to
develop the strategy. The key of creating a strategy is to identify the “Sweet Spot” in which
consists on knowing the customers’ needs in way that competitors cannot given the landscape

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 where it competes, and efficient manner to meet these needs is to develop two or three different
strategic options. In those options, employees at all levels should be included because they are
the primary component to carry out the strategy. Therefore, all level all management should
become teachers to lower level employees for well-being of the strategy. If a company has
success on capturing its strategy in few words, and communicating it effectively, the firm would
increase the long-term financial performance.
Critical Issues
First of all, one issue is given by the article which is the most executives cannot define
the objective, scope and the advantages of their business strategies; therefore, they are
considered as failures since they do not have enough expertise to create or executive the strategy
statement. The strategy is the main tool that companies use to be competitive in the market, so if
a company never develops a business strategy never is going to be profitable. Another issue is
related to the communication of the strategy because it is not enough to create it also it is
important to communicate it effectively. So, if executive managers do not have or develop
communication skills, never they are going to make their employees internalize and use the
strategy statement as guidance to perform their duties. Sometime companies spent time and
resources on developing empty ideas because there is not any strategy. For instance, engineers in
the R&D department create products with “must have” features for customers that maybe will
not pay, or sellers are increasing sells and offers although the manufacturing section has just
invested in new equipment for increasing the production, and so on. Therefore, it is important to
have a clear strategy to avoid unbalance in the company´s resources. Finally, if a company does
not determine or establish the advantage on its strategy statement, the company will never be
competitive because not having advantage means that the company does not reflect any aspect
that makes it different from other firms. Hence, customers could not find that company as new
alternative of being a provider.
Lessons Learned
As a professional who wants to be in an executive position, I consider important the
knowledge of the 3 components of a good strategy statement (objective, scope, and advantage)
because the key of running a business is the strategy, and if a strategy is not well-defined, the
business would not be successful. It is important to define the objective to determine the main
goal of the company, and the time frame to reach it, to establish a scope to determine in which
landscape the business will operate, and to generate the advantage to visualize and compare the
position of the business regarding its competitors. Another lesson is the importance of having
communication skills. The operating and financial results depend on how effectively the strategy
statement was communicated. If the strategy is explained adequately to every hierarchy in the
company, employees and managers at all levels would perform their jobs based on the
requirements asked by the strategy. Finally, the main element to warranty the success of the
strategy implementation is to have the most skilled workforce within the company. Having well-
qualified workforce allows that the company could carry out strategy implementation because

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 they have the expertise, they are quick learners, they could make the adequate decisions to
develop the strategy effectively.
Best Practices
An adequate practice is to develop the customer value proposition because it allows
identifying what makes the company distinctive regarding its competitors. The article exhibits
the value proposition of Wal-Mart which reflects that “everyday low prices for a broad range of
goods that are always in stock in convenient geographic locations” but it has issues on customer
services and ambience. By implementing this tool, it can be verified if the objective has been
achieving, and what the issues in the strategy. Another great practice is to create training
programs to teach low level employees all the skills and knowledge to develop the strategy
statement effectively. A well-understood statement of strategy balances the behavior inside the
company, and it permits everybody in the firm to adequate make decisions, and to render all
employees to give all their potential. Finally, a good practice is to capture the strategy in a few
key words to facilitate its understanding and employees could perform their jobs based on the
strategy´s requirements. These few worlds can generate a huge impact on the company by
defining the grasp of the firm, and improving long-term financial performance.
How can you relate THIS article with the TOPICS COVERED in class?
This article is totally related to the level 5 leadership because executive managers have to
be a level 5 leader to communicate effectively strategy and facilitate its implementation.
Moreover, the determination of the strategy is one of the task of the CSO. A CSO has to establish
the objective, the scope and the advantage of the company, and he/she is on charge on carrying
out the strategy implementation. Furthermore, Netflix represents a good case of developing
effectively a strategy. For instance, its objective was to be the main provider of streaming
services, its scope was customers who looked for cheaper entertainment and its advantage were
the no late policy and its innovation development on streaming services.
Do you see any alignment of the concepts described in THIS article with the class concepts
reviewed in class? Which are those alignments and misalignments? Why?
There are several alignment between the article and class. First, the successful of a
company’s project depends on how well understood is the strategy statement. For instance, the
professor showed on class several commercials that had been presenting in the Super bowl. All
those commercials had an intention by showing politics message related to the immigration,
equality, and environment to try to create conscious about those circumstances in the community.
Moreover, the professor showed a frame of the American Football game Patriots vs Falcons, and
we had to analyze the strategy. In that video, I could observe a misalignment which is that does
not matter if you have implemented the strategy effectively, if you do not maintain that strategy
on top, competitors will defeat you like happened in that game that Falcons was winning, but
Patriots came through with a better strategy a defeated the Falcons. The idea is not only to create
a good strategy statement but also to maintain that strategy updated in order to avoid rude actions

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 from competitors. The article never mentioned how to keep that strategy alive in well
conditions, only mentioned the important keys to implement that strategy effectively.

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