I recently assisted an organisation that operates in the Business to Business (B2B) space to think through which organisations they should be ‘engaging’. This led me to thinking about how important words are to an organisation.
Words such as client, stakeholder, partner were all used in the conversation but on reflection it was clear that the common understanding of these terms as they applied them in their organisation needed attention.
Two other terms ‘advocacy’ and ‘marketing’ were also part of the conversation, and again on reflection I think there were wide ranging views of these two terms in the leadership team.
I have encouraged them to think about and to reach common understanding of these terms as they apply to their organisation.
I don’t think this is being pedantic; it’s being strategic….
If an organisation wants to have all its policies, practices, processes and systems tightly aligned to its strategic intent, it needs to share a common language.
In my view, the 5 words mentioned above are all critical to business success. An organisation operating in the B2B space must know clearly who its stakeholders, partners and clients are and undertake advocacy and marketing appropriately. Mixing this up, these terms will certainly be wasteful and could be counterproductive.
This is one example, but there are probably many similar terms to get clarified in your organisation. Getting the organisation to speak the same language is not a ‘nice to have’, its good business sense.
For more information, email john@arnesenandassociates.co.za
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