What Is Pervasive Strategy

Pervasive Strategy is a term I’ve used for a few years. It has been so effective, that it is now on my consulting company’s masthead.

The two words together can apply to many domains from military and war to sports and championships.

My colleagues ask, “In a business context, what is pervasive strategy?” I use pervasive strategy to describe the best (and perhaps only) way for business to be successful in the context of Marketing as Strategy.

Marketing we know is “the transformational engine for growth and one of the most important elements to get right in a business initiative, before all others.” Every other function in a business, from operations and sales, to product innovation and development to finance and accounting all depend on a solid marketing foundation.

Pervasive Strategy – Defined

The dictionary tells us that to be pervasive, something must be “spread throughout.” The dictionary also tells us that a strategy is “a plan, method or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result.” In a business context, pervasive strategy is defined as a shared plan, a leadership approach, and a set of methods aligned to achieve commonly-held corporate objectives.

Pervasive Strategy is:

1. a flexible plan shared throughout an organization that broadly outlines action a company must take to achieve a goal.
2. also an approach that effective leaders use to enable marketing as the transformational engine to achieve both strategic and tactical business goals.
3. the methods that deliver exceptional outcomes to meet or exceed expectations of customers, stakeholders, and employees.

Why Not Pervasive Marketing?

You may be wondering why the term isn’t “Pervasive Marketing?”  Unfortunately, “marketing” is a broadly misunderstood term. To most in the corporate world, it has a limited meaning. There are many reasons for this. To be clear, marketing and strategy cannot be separated, but to raise collective knowledge and awareness, pervasive strategy is a better term.

Many believe marketing to be only promotional activities (the creation of promotional deliverables, like brochures and websites). Informed leaders know successful promotional activities require a foundation based on deeper marketing principles. Others believe marketing to be only lead generation. Lead generation, we know is the sustainable outcome of good marketing aligned to drive a pervasive strategy.

Marketing contributes across business in terms of what products to make and sell, what customer experiences must be nurtured, what markets and customer segments to target, what price and what business models to reach those targets, forward and rearward research, real-time metrics and tuning, and deep strategic activity integrated into the core of the business, and more…

Effective Marketing Requires a Pervasive Strategy

Silo-based marketing tactics cannot coexist with a pervasive strategy involving the entire corporation. The research and literature is rich with failures where the marketing foundation is not first built. If there truly is a pervasive strategy, people are empowered to succeed, including marketing.

A pervasive strategy must have meaning and broad context for all employees. Knowing that marketing is strategy, it’s clear to see that pervasive strategy has context for everyone. By focusing on what pervasive strategy is we reduce confusion over institutional (and sometimes incorrect) knowledge, and compounding that confusion for marketing as a misunderstood term.

When is Pervasive, Not Pervasive?

Short-answer to this is, never. A strategy that is not pervasive is unlikely to succeed. Consider a military analogy. If the troops are not briefed on the strategy, before going into battle, how likely is it that they will take the right targets, and achieve the objectives for the operation – and without casualties?  Or, in sports, imagine the World Cup, World Series, or Super Bowl without preparation, people knowing their positions and responsibilities. As an organization, each player must know who depends on them and who each player themselves depend on in real-time out on the field. This pervasive strategy is required in order to execute and win with championship precision.  The coach shared and practiced a pervasive strategy, and the team members all behave instinctively for the ultimate outcome.

In business, there are times when the team working on executing a pervasive strategy must be smaller than the entire company. For example, mergers and acquisitions, new product development, partnerships and other projects prior to public announcement. However, once made public, everyone in the organization should know the pervasive strategy for the initiative so each can do their part to support the expected outcome.

Making Your Strategy Pervasive

As a leader, you might be asking, “How do I make my strategy pervasive?” It is the obvious next question, and the second most often heard from my colleagues. It is very simple.

1. Build a culture where everyone is responsible for pervasive strategy.
2. Believe that the more people that know and influence strategy, the better the results and faster the outcome.
3. Ask for and listen to staff input on plans, methods and objectives in developing, tuning and executing strategy.
4. Nurture that culture by allowing ideas to flow, and influence strategy in an ongoing way.
5. Recognize input from the team as the source that drives critical pivots in strategy, and create an open environment.
6. Share, share and share the strategy across, up and down the organization.
7. Be clear that strategy is never done; it is a pivoting journey to achieve the corporate objectives.
8. Prepare people for smooth strategy pivots; they will be perceived as change.
9. When economic drivers, industry trends and market shifts happen, don’t wait, adjust and communicate the new strategy.

Share your comments with the SteinVox community. What success stories do you have around your use of Pervasive Strategy? What lessons learned can you share?