Corporate and Business Unit Strategy

An era of unprecedented technological and societal change

​This era of disruptions is creating enormous competitive challenges and opportunities for companies in every industry. Many organizations are beginning to realize that current or previous successful approaches to running their business are unlikely to sustain their success in the future. We help companies evaluate their strategies, and we serve as their advisor and guide through each step of their strategic journey.

Back to top

How Deloitte can help with your business unit strategy

​Our Monitor Deloitte Corporate and Business Unit Strategy professionals work with CEOs, CSOs, and business unit leaders to help their companies win in the marketplace. We support our clients' strategic journeys through a set of services that revolve around several key questions, including:

• Is our current strategy delivering the results we need to be successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace?
• How can we rapidly and effectively translate our strategies into actionable initiatives?
• What strategies can help us keep up with—and get ahead of—future market trends?
• Are there new or different businesses and business models we should be considering?
• How do we design a robust strategic planning process for future growth?
• How do we determine the types of innovations to pursue to help us meet our goals for the future?

Back to top

Our approach is informed by four fundamental beliefs:

1. Companies should concentrate their efforts on bolder and more focused bets. When others tend toward timidity and inertia, the most successful companies make bold (but well-informed) moves to unlock new sources of growth.
2. A successfully implemented strategy should be managed as a change journey. Great strategy moves beyond analysis into an immersive journey where teams grapple with issues, integrate a range of diverse perspectives, and question their own myths. This process can be challenging, but it also can create the deep conviction people need if they are to commit to a bold, new direction.
3. Challenging orthodoxies is the hardest part of coming up with bold options. The place where organizations tend to struggle the most when identifying strategic options for their business is in envisioning strategic alternatives that are dramatically different than the status quo. Making this shift in mindset typically requires looking outside of the organization for inspiration and insights.
4. Pragmatism is key. Many strategy-setting efforts fail because they evolve into an overly academic exercise of exploring unrealistic possibilities or get bogged down in analysis paralysis as strategy teams examine all possible new product categories, geographies, and customer segments they could potentially chase. A good strategy process needs to be ruthlessly efficient, while simultaneously leaving room for exploration of the unknown.

Back to top

Your goals define your business unit strategy

​Strategic decisions cannot be made within a vacuum. Or, to put it another way: Just because your company has a goal it wants to pursue doesn't mean that goal is worth pursuing. Our strategy-setting process is a six-step journey rooted in the StrategyByDesign™ building blocks.

The fundamental truth about defining and setting your corporate strategy is this: You're not likely to define a single strategy that will achieve everything you want, which means you need to make hard choices and trade-offs to achieve the things that are most important to your organization. In addition:

• A strategy needs to be clear about what the organization will and will not do.
• A well-articulated strategy should serve as a guide for organizational decision making, portfolio investment, and capability building.
• Strategic decisions should be monitored to ensure ongoing value creation as organizations evolve in size, shape, and structure, with major inflection points distinctly defined at specific points in the journey.

Back to top