Is everyone rowing in the same direction?

I often talk about positioning and why it’s important for connecting with people outside your company: With prospects, analysts, customers, journalists and even contractors. This is all true. But an under-discussed aspect of positioning is how important it is to get all your team members aligned, from the leadership / C-level team all the way down to individual contributors.

Companies with poor positioning often find themselves going in 100 different directions at once. That’s not necessarily because each individual is trying to go in multiple directions or that the CEO lacks vision. It could be because every person has a different interpretation of which market the company is trying to win, who the ideal customer would be and which pain points the product solves. This challenge is especially painful for growth-stage startups that are adding new team members quickly and don’t have time to spend a lot of time educating each person about vision and target markets.

Clarity on positioning — and especially writing that positioning down and translating it into a strategic narrative — is a key part of keeping the entire team aligned with the company vision and strategy, even when adding dozens of team members every month.