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Strategy is a plan of action designed to convert market opportunities into business results. As a business leader, your single most important task is to think through the mission of your business and to answer these penetrating questions:

• What is our business and what should it be?
• Whom are we trying to serve and what do they care about most?
• What is our service concept and the implications for how we design, deliver and sell our services?

An effective strategy is built upon a clear set of objectives, grounded in the realities of the market, focused on what customers care about most, and organizes resources within the firm to create satisfied clients. In short, strategy is the framework you use to make today's decisions for tomorrow's results.

Dr. George Labovitz calls the output of this critical thinking the Main Thing. Every business has a main thing — the single most powerful expression of what it hopes to accomplish, its instrument for producing growth and profits. Growth and profits are surely the ultimate aim of any business organization, but they are outcomes of succeeding at the Main Thing. Fred Smith, CEO of Federal Express, describes what he calls the 'theory of business.'

Every successful business has, at its heart, a theory of the business — an underlying set of supporting objectives and business philosophy that gives people a foundation on which to operate. Working inside that framework, they've got an idea of what we want them to do — to prioritize. We [at FedEx] have a very clear business mission and business theory which is certainly understood by every member of the management team, and probably 90 percent of the workforce. ¹

Dr. Labovitz describes three essential characteristics of an effective Main Thing:

• "The main thing for the organization as a whole must be a common and unifying concept to which everyone can contribute.
• Each department and team must be able to see a direct relationship between what it does and this overarching goal.
• The main thing must be clear, easy to understand, consistent with the strategy of the organization, and actionable by every group or individual."³

Customers determine effective strategies to be sure, but the people who have to carry out the strategy through their actions at work must contribute their knowledge and experience to forming strategic plans. Strategies are worthless if they are not implemented.

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