Elevarse Performance Consulting

Every leader wants a purpose-driven organization, but few know how to translate that lofty ideal into portfolio management.

Without a rigorous framework, companies often fall into the trap of “conglomerate discount”—where the whole is valued at less than the sum of its parts because the core purpose has been diluted by reactive, money-chasing ventures.

Jonathan Trevor’s recent research highlights a critical framework for executing strategy: The intersection of Purposefulness and External Demand.

The Four Quadrants of Alignment

You need to identify where your current business lines sit:

• Strategically Aligned: High Purpose / High Demand. What you do matters, and people buy it. This is the goal.
• Wishful Thinking: High Purpose / Low Demand. Noble, but unsustainable. If no one buys it, there is no impact.
• Opportunistic: Low Purpose / High Demand. You are reacting to the market with no long-term logic. This leads to burnout and misalignment.
• Dead on Arrival: Low Purpose / Low Demand. (Avoid at all costs) .

Structuring Your Strategic Choices

Strategic planning is not just about budgets and KPIs; those are merely expressions of strategy, not the strategy itself. Real strategy requires making hard choices about your value proposition.

To align your portfolio, you must answer “The How”: How can we best respond to customer preferences to fulfill the enterprise purpose?.

If your organization cannot supply what customers want—whether it is affordability, bundling, or personalization—your purpose will go unfulfilled.

Your Call to Action

This week, audit your current products and services using the “Start, Stop, Continue” method based on the article’s framework:

• Continue: Offerings that fulfill the purpose and meet external demand.
• Stop: Offerings that generate cash but dilute your identity (Opportunistic) or offerings that fit the mission but have no market (Wishful).
• Start: New offerings that leverage your unique organizational capabilities to meet emerging needs.

Don’t settle for “vanilla outcomes” by copying competitors. Build a strategy that is uniquely yours.

#BusinessTransformation #OperationalExcellence #StrategyExecution #PortfolioManagement #MarketStrategy

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/strategic-alignment-reconciles-purpose-and-profitability/