Relationship Marketing Strategy and implementation

The customer market domain: Managing relationships with buyers 131

What is the corporate strategy?

What do we need to achieve for birds, conservation and the environment over the next few years? What

sort of RSPB do we want for the future?

These are the questions that the Management Board and Council have been considering with the

senior managers. The result of our planning is Future Directions: the RSPB’s Corporate Strategy for

1992/97.

The corporate strategy is a vision of the future direction for the RSPB. It defines what we need

to do and achieve in a planned way by working together over the next five years. By having a clear

vision of the RSPB’s future direction, every function and department can see how it contributes

to achieving the vision.

The corporate strategy sets direction but is flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. It

will allow us to grasp opportunities which arise unpredictably knowing that they are in tune with

our overall direction. The strategy is evolutionary rather than revolutionary in that it builds on

the excellent progress already made. But it does mean real change.

The conservation movement as a whole faces unparalleled opportunities and risks in the envi-

ronmentally aware 1990s. At the RSPB we are well resourced with skills and finance. We have a

wide and positive public profile and are well placed to make the most of the next five years.

The RSPB’s mission

In preparing to review our direction for the next five years, we sharpened the defini-

tion of the RSPB’s mission – really our reason for being.The following is a statement

of our mission:

The RSPB believes that the beauty of birds and nature enriches the lives of many people but also that

nature conservation is fundamental to a healthy environment on which the survival of the human race

depends.The RSPB therefore strives for the conservation of wild birds and the environment on which they

depend, primarily in the UK but increasingly in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

The vision

What is our vision of the future direction of the RSPB?

We aim to be the foremost bird conservation organisation as well as having considerable expert-

ise and standing in broader nature conservation and environmental policy.

Birds will continue to be our start point. Given their visibility, popularity and value as indicator

species for the health of the whole environment, birds provide an excellent focus for a wide range

of conservation work. We believe the RSPB will achieve most for conservation by keeping wild

birds at the core of its mission while continuing to develop work on broader conservation and

environmental issues. We restate our commitment to all wild birds and the wider countryside,

though we will continue to concentrate on priority species and habitats in order to target our

resources most effectively.

The strategic objectives

What objectives do we plan to have achieved at the end of five years?

And how will we know how successful we have been?

Conservation in the United Kingdom

We’ve set ourselves some very specific objectives, called ‘ends’ objectives, for safeguarding and

enhancing priority species, habitats and sites and for the re-creation of the wider countryside.We

plan to increase resources by over £4 million to achieve them. We will complete work already

begun on species and habitat action plans and, in particular, we will increase the scope of our

Figure 2.6.1 Future Directions: the RSPB’s corporate strategy for 1992/97.