A business needs a grand strategy — an expression of the owner’s intent for it. Without this, the business leader might take the organisation in the wrong direction, leading to clashes with the owner. To avoid this, the owner must ensure the business leader clearly understands the destination they should be aiming for.
Owners and leaders can align with an honest conversation around three deceptively simple questions — and capturing their answers in the PUN template (attached):
1. Who are we? (The business)
2. What do we do? (The activities we perform that create value)
3. Why do we do this? (Our purpose).
With alignment at the highest level, the business leader can now break down the grand strategy into a series of intermediate aims to achieve and immediate problems to solve. These are the missions for the business. These must be consequential — enabling the business to reach its destination — but also achievable.
For example, if the owner of our business was Elon Musk, these might be the missions we need to focus on:
Grand Strategy: Multi-planet human civilisation.
Intermediate Aim to Achieve: Thriving human colony on Mars.
Problems to Solve: Building rockets to get humans to Mars | Creating infrastructure for humans to survive on Mars | Inventing sustainable supply chains so humans can thrive on Mars independently.
Identifying the right missions is not easy. But leaders must refrain from jumping to solutions before deciding which missions to focus on. Otherwise, talent focuses on the wrong things — leading to misalignment — and leaders overreach — trying to decide everything themselves — which can seriously undermine the business.
The PUN Template (Purpose, Users, Needs)
A business doesn’t survive by only satisfying the owner’s needs. It also has to delight others — talent, suppliers, wider society and, most importantly, paying customers. For this, we have to take the user perspective — identifying what they want and what they believe they need to get it.
Therefore, we need to answer the next three questions on the PUN template:
4. The big aim to achieve? (Or problem we’re trying to solve — i.e. the mission)
5. Who will benefit most from this? (Prioritising paying users first)
6. What do those users want? (Take their perspective — what are they looking for?)
Now we have a grand strategy; a series of critical missions to achieve it; an understanding of who will pay for this; and a view on what those users really want. We can share PUNs widely in the organisation to get everyone on the same page — creating alignment between owner, leader, and talent.
Now the business is ready to act.
Quick Test
List the top three missions you’re working on.
For each one ask: If this were solved, would it materially move us towards our destination?
If not, your missions may be not be consequential and talent and resources are being wasted in activity that the owner won’t value, even if you get there.
What Next?
The art of situational awareness — the most important skill in business today.
To follow this series join the Telegram channel t.me/wardleymapping
Or subscribe to the blog https://powermaps.net/blog
If you found this post useful consider sharing it with others.
And if you’d like to think and act strategically in your organisation explore more here: https://powermaps.net
Owners and leaders can align with an honest conversation around three deceptively simple questions — and capturing their answers in the PUN template (attached):
1. Who are we? (The business)
2. What do we do? (The activities we perform that create value)
3. Why do we do this? (Our purpose).
With alignment at the highest level, the business leader can now break down the grand strategy into a series of intermediate aims to achieve and immediate problems to solve. These are the missions for the business. These must be consequential — enabling the business to reach its destination — but also achievable.
For example, if the owner of our business was Elon Musk, these might be the missions we need to focus on:
Grand Strategy: Multi-planet human civilisation.
Intermediate Aim to Achieve: Thriving human colony on Mars.
Problems to Solve: Building rockets to get humans to Mars | Creating infrastructure for humans to survive on Mars | Inventing sustainable supply chains so humans can thrive on Mars independently.
Identifying the right missions is not easy. But leaders must refrain from jumping to solutions before deciding which missions to focus on. Otherwise, talent focuses on the wrong things — leading to misalignment — and leaders overreach — trying to decide everything themselves — which can seriously undermine the business.
The PUN Template (Purpose, Users, Needs)
A business doesn’t survive by only satisfying the owner’s needs. It also has to delight others — talent, suppliers, wider society and, most importantly, paying customers. For this, we have to take the user perspective — identifying what they want and what they believe they need to get it.
Therefore, we need to answer the next three questions on the PUN template:
4. The big aim to achieve? (Or problem we’re trying to solve — i.e. the mission)
5. Who will benefit most from this? (Prioritising paying users first)
6. What do those users want? (Take their perspective — what are they looking for?)
Now we have a grand strategy; a series of critical missions to achieve it; an understanding of who will pay for this; and a view on what those users really want. We can share PUNs widely in the organisation to get everyone on the same page — creating alignment between owner, leader, and talent.
Now the business is ready to act.
Quick Test
List the top three missions you’re working on.
For each one ask: If this were solved, would it materially move us towards our destination?
If not, your missions may be not be consequential and talent and resources are being wasted in activity that the owner won’t value, even if you get there.
What Next?
The art of situational awareness — the most important skill in business today.
To follow this series join the Telegram channel t.me/wardleymapping
Or subscribe to the blog https://powermaps.net/blog
If you found this post useful consider sharing it with others.
And if you’d like to think and act strategically in your organisation explore more here: https://powermaps.net
