A sound strategy is the foundation of any business’s success. But what exactly does it consist of? When you open the theory books, the individual components of corporate strategy often seem isolated and abstract. For successful implementation, however, these elements must mesh seamlessly and be understandable to everyone in the company.

The 5 core competencies of a holistic strategy

A strategic foundation is essentially based on five pillars:

1. Vision and mission: The ‘why’ and ‘where’. The vision describes the desired future state of the company, whilst the mission defines its current purpose and the value it brings to society.
2. Strategic objectives (OKRs or Balanced Scorecard): Specific, measurable milestones that the company aims to achieve over the next three to five years.
3. Market and competitive positioning: A clear definition of the markets in which you operate and how you differentiate yourself from the competition through unique selling points (USPs).
4. Core competencies and resources: The internal strengths, technologies and capabilities that must be mobilised to achieve the objectives.
5. Action plans (roadmaps): The operational steps and initiatives that specify who is responsible for which tasks and by when.

The communication bottleneck: Studies regularly show that only a fraction of the workforce can identify the core components of their own company’s strategy. If these pillars exist only as a sea of text on the intranet, there is no emotional connection.

From text document to lively dialogue

The individual components of the corporate strategy must not remain theoretical fragments. They must be told as a coherent story.

This is where we come in with the dialog picture method. We encapsulate your vision, your goals and your roadmap in a shared, richly detailed visual world. When employees see how their day-to-day work (actions) ties in with the overarching goal (vision), a genuine sense of identification emerges.

Have you already defined the components of your strategy but are struggling with internal communication? Let’s work together to translate your strategic elements into a clear visual language.

FIT FOR FUTURE

Helm is a globally active family-owned company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The fields of activity are the business units Chemicals, Fertilizer, Coop Protection and Pharma, which our company with its 1,500 employees takes care of.

In the course of the transformation process, we decided to use a dialog picture in order to communicate the different aspects and areas to our employees in an understandable and easy-to-remember way. For this purpose, each employee also received his or her own picture after the company meeting.

TRANSFORMATION PLANT HANOVER

Process optimization, strategy, cultural work and good communication are key to the VW Nutzfahrzeuge plant management Hanover in leading the way to a successful future. In the past, strategy and transformation processes were often accompanied by powerpoint "battles".There were numerous charts that tried to make it as comprehensible as possible what goals the company wanted to achieve and how it planed to get there.

Now the company wants to go other ways and has developed a vision for the future together with Goldpark and DIALOGBILD. On the one hand, the picture emerged in an intensive process, on the other hand, the discussion about the things that are important to the board in the picture led to a common understanding and also made it possible for different perspectives to be discussed and brought together.

This helps the Hannover plant to communicate its way into the the future with a common voice.

Thanks to the close cooperation between Goldpark and DIALOGBILD, the dialog picture was used for all events, informations and formats that relate to the transformation as well as to reflect the developments in the transformation process.

THE HAHN GROUP - TRADITIONALLY INNOVATIVE!

The Hahn Group is one of the largest automobile trading companies in Germany. With around 2,000 employees and 35 plants of the Volkswagen, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat brands in the Stuttgart metropolitan region, Hahn has enjoyed a strong market position for 100 years and is a reliable partner for customers, employees and business partners.
The automotive industry is undergoing the greatest upheaval in its history. The Hahn family of entrepreneurs has always implemented innovative ideas and broken new ground, making the company an extremely successful enterprise. In 2018, the management developed a long-term strategy that, in addition to economic factors, also includes topics such as digitisation and new business models. The great challenge that drew our attention to DIALOGBILD was to make this 150-page paper understandable to all employees in a simple form.