North Star

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Align your company focus

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The North Star has been used for the purposes of navigation for centuries, acting as a guiding light, people have used its brightness and prominence in the sky to ensure they are travelling in the right direction. The principle of the North Star works as a fantastic analogy in the world of business. Are you and your colleagues clear about whether your business is travelling in the ‘right direction’?

I have been involved in the world of business improvement and customer experience for over twenty years. For the past six years, I have had the opportunity to see and experience organisations across a variety of industries all over the world. Whilst I observe a number of similar issues and opportunities to improve and become more customer centric, one of the most common observations I make is on the subject of ‘clarity of purpose’. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.

How to test your North Star metric?

I think that every single person in your organisation SHOULD have a very clear sense of understanding the reasons why the organisation does what it does AND why the organisation exists. The problem is that I do not think there are many organisations where this simple understanding actually exists. You can easily test the theory, go and seek ten employees at random in your place of work and ask them these two questions:

1. What does our organisation do?
2. Why does our organisation exist?


It will be fascinating to see what responses you get. If the responses are very similar, then it is possible that there is clarity of purpose in your business. If the answers are varied and different – perhaps not. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.

Driving transformation

One of the first steps in business transformation is communicating purpose, everyone should very clearly understand that “Why?” In uncertain economic times, having a clear north-star objective is what can keep organisations on the right path. It’s what guides leadership decisions, from cost-cutting to entering new markets and creating new products. The North Star in this case means every single person in an organisation should have a very clear sense of understanding the reasons why the organisation does what it does and why the organisation exists.

Nowadays, you've got to listen to the employees you have today, because they are more qualified than anyone else to know what your clients want.
- How are the consumer needs changing? 
- What are the consumers demanding?
This kind of insight into how consumer behaviour is changing will allow organisations to remain relevant and retain their competitive edge in a post-pandemic reality.