Decoding the Corporate Strategy

Kayla, the new CEO in Boston, and Tom, her head of strategy, are reviewing the first draft of the new corporate strategy document.

Decoding the Corporate Strategy

Listen and choose the right answer

What is Kayla's main criticism of the forty-page draft?

• It is too short and lacks financial details.
• It consists of aspirational boilerplate with no real substance.
• It was written without consulting the external advisors in New York.

According to Kayla, what is the company currently suffering from?

• Severe strategic drift due to avoiding trade-offs.
• Too much focus on enterprise software.
• A lack of investors in Boston and London.

What do Kayla and Tom decide to do with the forty-page document?

• Send it directly to the board of directors.
• Translate it into three different languages.
• Throw it out and start with a clean whiteboard.

What is written on the sticky note found behind Kayla's desk?

• A new mission statement for the hardware division.
• We sell everything to everyone, and nobody cares.
• A reminder about the Friday morning meeting with investors.

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Kayla: Tom, I've just finished reading our forty-page draft of the ____ , and honestly, I'm exhausted.
• Tom: That bad, huh? We spent three months putting that ____ together with the external consultants.
• Kayla: It says nothing about our ____ or our actual competitive advantage in the software market.
• Tom: That's because we tried to include every possible market segment in our ____ .
• Kayla: Exactly, and when you try to serve everyone everywhere, your ____ becomes completely invisible.

Sources: photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels