If you asked someone in your organization at random – anyone from big wigs to newbies – what they believed your company stands for and where it’s going in the future, what’s the likelihood their answers would match up?
Internal alignment across an organization is one of those seemingly-Sisyphean tasks. As your organization reacts to changing market conditions, each team’s focus and perception of priority shifts as well. Sales is talking up your offering to the best buyers, Marketing is focused on delivering narrative, Executives are focused on forward momentum and growth, and product is focused on, well, product. Everyone has their own take on their organization’s mission, and sometimes that pulls things apart rather than brings them together.
While no organization should be static, each organization should have a center of orbit.
Enter the Anthem Deck.
The secret sauce for establishing company clarity
Consider the Anthem Deck your voice-of-god asset that keeps projects and people from becoming too caught up in their own agendas. When each person is keen to make their voices and priorities heard, it might end up with a very muddled project, which is sub-optimal. But an Anthem Deck serves as an agreed-upon resource that everyone can turn to, reference, and present from, so that relevant audiences – both internal and external – can evaluate work in accordance with how well it speaks to the organization’s goals.
The point of an Anthem Deck is that it’s high level, and it’s succinct; it shouldn’t be more than 10 slides long.
We know, we know: brevity is a big ask. But it’s an important one.
An Anthem Deck is not the time nor the place for product specs, sales stats, or growth projections. Instead, its usefulness lies in how it helps an audience develop an immediate understanding of your company’s story, its vision, and how it plans on getting there.
The Anthem Deck is built by bringing together leading voices to showcase goals, customer pain points, benefits – whatever is most critical to understanding the organization at a glance. Most importantly, by seeking the help of internal teams to create the story, it brings them onboard with the process and helps them contextualize their roles in the organization. You might go as far as to say that the creative process of building the Anthem Deck is an act of internal engagement in itself.
Not a one-trick pony: a resource for rainy days, sunny days, and any day in between.
The aim is to have versatility in application, but unity in message, and because of that, an Anthem Deck can be used again, and again, and again. Some example use cases include:
- Introducing prospective clients to the key benefits of your company
- Getting new hires up to speed on the central mission
- Keeping feedback on projects grounded in the big picture
- Informing partnering agencies or third-parties about your priorities
- Evaluating a big-investment deliverable against whether it address your true company needs
The usefulness of this deck is only limited by your imagination. Being able to bring big conversations back to basics is exceedingly useful; instead of spinning off into unproductive realms, you get closer and clearer to realizing your organizational goals, offerings, and big-vision ambitions.
A worthwhile undertaking
Building an Anthem Deck is a highly individualized process from company to company. It’s no small feat to encapsulate the core of your business, its offerings, and how the story connects everyone, from individual contributors within the company to the end-users of the offering.
To do so in a easily digestible presentation is even more ambitious. But the value is clear once everyone sees the pieces come together. They understand how their role relates to what the organization is contributing to the world.
If you’d like guidance in building a custom Anthem Deck for your organization, feel free to reach out with questions.