Orientation as Strategy: How SMEs Can Build Resilience and Sustainable Growth

The orientation of a business relates to how it approaches carrying out its mission and core functions. Orientation enables businesses to successfully respond to shocks and capture opportunities that arise from ongoing upheaval. According to the World Economic Forum, the orientation of a business can increase a company's "Adaptive Capacity," or the capacity to be resilient by overcoming challenges, and its "Sustainable Growth," or the capacity to generate lasting financial strength driven by innovative business models, products, and services, which will be one of the key factors in making an SME company a future-ready one.

WHAT IS ORIENTATION?

Orientation is an organization's overall culture or style that determines how it manages and responds to a number of crucial decisions. A company’s orientation can be broken down into Five distinct characteristics: autonomy, the degree of freedom given to employees; proactiveness, the ability to anticipate and pursue opportunities; competitive aggressiveness, the ability to improve current market position and earn more market share; risk-taking, the tendency to take action despite the likelihood of failure; and innovativeness, the process of companies supporting new ideas and experimentation. These dimensions together describe the company's overall approach to carrying out its mission and essentially subsequently translating the organization's vision into both short- and long-term strategic decisions. For instance, when executives give employees more authority to make decisions that have an impact on the business, this encourages them to use creative approaches and be more proactive. Employees can be more innovative and risk-taking because of the psychological safety that management offers, which fosters a supportive environment for further innovation. As such, companies are more likely to adapt in a timely manner to take chances when organizational cultures value innovation and proactivity. SME businesses can be among the first to introduce their products to the market while being confident in the distinctive value propositions of their innovations.

THE CASE STUDY

During Portugal's economic crisis from 2008 to 2013, Vieira de Almeida (VdA), a full-service business with more than 300 lawyers serving 12 jurisdictions in Europe and Africa today, underwent a significant transition. Following the 2008 financial crisis, VdA started an innovation program that involved the entire business, defined processes, allocated roles, and elevated innovation of finding solutions to the core of the company's values. To change the company from a typical mid-sized Portuguese family business into a full partnership with innovation and good citizenship at its core, the company at the time used an all-hands-on-deck operation in which management and employees alike engaged in a "top-to-bottom" strategic overhaul of the company. Supporting an innovative culture necessitated not only leveraging the company's existing culture but also codifying it into the organizational structure of the company, with the goal of transforming VdA into a "lighthouse" of innovation programs in law firms. The ability to overcome financial crises requires the adaptive capacity to build resilience, which is one of the most essential factors for sustainable growth.

In the business world, where resilience and adaptability are two essential qualities of companies that will grow and survive in the future, SMEs and medium-sized businesses can use brand values and orientation to strengthen their overall strategies and enhance the efficiency of their operations.

#BRANDi #BRANDiGlobal #ThinkWithBRANDi #GoodtoGREAT #GlobalEconomy #Sustainomy #FutureReady #Orientation #SMEs #Business #Resilience