The art of Strategy Execution Management is one seemingly forever shrouded in mystique. How is that organizations can boom or bust when their track record would suggest the otherwise?
Why do some businesses generate consistently impressive revenue and drive down operating expenditure whilst others focus on increasing their market share and category penetration?
More importantly, why do 40% of strategic transformations fail to achieve their potential value when we are in a time of free trade, free movement of people and resource, all the while equipped with greater technology and over 100 years of management theory and practice to learn from?
What is it that you can do in your organization to help create change, drive a culture of success and do this while empowering your colleagues and achieving personal goals?
This is your guide to Strategy Execution Management – all you need to know about taking your company’s vision and turning it into operational reality with eBooks, videos, guides, case studies, theory overviews and much more.
Traditionally we think of strategy as the formulation of a vision, a plan to bring this to life and then rudimentary measurement systems to track the performance of the plan.
Alternatively, consider the three different focuses your organization can have at any one moment – operational management (business as usual activity), continuous improvement (identifying small changes which can drive down wasted efforts) and transformation (setting breakthrough goals to drastically change the processes and performance over a three-five year horizon).
Furthermore, factor in the need to analyze your internal and external situation, set objectives, tactics, measurements, review and move forward within departments such as marketing, sales and product.
There are many answers which can be given as to ‘what is Strategy Execution Management’. That is not to say the above answers are incorrect, but more so that these are all involved in the convey belt of this area of management.
Put simply, Strategy Execution Management is the sum of three distinct areas: Formulation, Implementation and Execution.
Developing a vision and set of objectives and initiatives based on the voice of the customer that delivers a step-change in performance for the organization, aligned to the business’ policy.
The translation of the strategy into breakthrough goals and improvement priorities, the required resources, metrics and defined activities to support the achievement of the strategy.
The operational activity of the strategy – the projects, activity, measures, performance management, and countermeasures associated with reaching the objectives and benefits of the strategy.
Alignment: Ensuring that your entire business is strategically fine-tuned in all their actions – resource, activity, measurements, communication and teams are aligned to what it is the business must achieve, as defined by the strategy, implementation and execution phases.
Business Policy: The business policy concerns itself with the purpose, organizational identity, what needs to be achieved, and utilization of resources to support any given strategy, project portfolio or task.
Continuous Improvement: A management approach which looks at increasing business effectiveness by reducing inefficiencies, frustrations, and waste (time, effort, material, etc.).
Hoshin Kanri: Sometimes known as Hoshin Planning, Policy, Goal or Strategy Deployment – is a strategic planning process whereby strategic goals are communicated and translated into action.
OGSM: Objective, goals, strategies and measures – a system that helps you to define your goals based on those which are broad, fixed and measurable, ensuring your actions and their measures link back to your strategy.
OKR: Objectives and Key Results – a model that looks at outcomes, linked to your strategy, which examines outcomes on a fluid basis each quarter. OKRs are attached to action plans to ensure your key objectives and their results are measured and achievable.
Operational Management: The management of daily work within an organization, ensuring that production and other teams maintain their expected work. Process optimization from continuous improvement will feed into business-as-usual activity (standardized work) through operational management.
Performance Management: The process of measuring all projects and actions within using a tracking system, such as a Bowling Chart, traffic lights and countermeasure sheet to ensure that the strategy is being executed to expected levels, and if not, what needs to be done to correct this.
Strategic Framework: A strategic framework is a structured method to support an organization to achieve its strategy – popular examples include OKR, OGSM and Hoshin Kanri (Policy Deployment).
Strategy Execution Management: The process of managing a strategy from its formulation through to execution, involving operational management, continuous improvement, transformation, performance management and leadership.
Strategy Execution: The operational activity of the strategy – the projects, activity, measurement, performance management, and countermeasures needed to make effective use of resource to reach the objectives of the strategy and realize the benefits of it.
Strategy Formulation: Also known as Strategic Planning, here you are developing a vision and set of objectives and initiatives which, based on the voice of the customer theory, will deliver a true step change in performance for the organization which aligns to the business’ policy.
Strategy Implementation The translation of the strategy into breakthrough goals and improvement priorities, the required resources, metrics and defined activities to support the achievement of the strategy.
Transformation: The approach of setting out a true step change in your existing performance – be that revenue, product offering etc, where you must make drastically different processes and management systems to achieve a performance level that transforms your business.
Voice of the Customer: The means of gauging and recording a customer’s experiences, expectations and wants from your business and then feeding this into your strategy and resulting Strategy Execution Management.
2020 introduced a once in a lifetime pandemic to the world.
Much has been written as to the toll that COVID-19 has had on our personal and professional lives, but it would be naïve to move ahead without learning from the past.
One thing that has returned front and centre is the need to heed and feed the Voice of the Customer – the group who your business exists to serve.
Industries were shocked into decades of transformation within a short space of time, meaning that every business re-evaluated how they deliver value to their customer. Without value, customers leave. And, unfortunately, no business has been immune.
Leaders are often moved by grandiose promises of the future and expect to see results immediately. This period, however, has served as a reminder of the importance of the process of Strategy Execution Management.
The 2020s has taught us that being agile in our approach to strategy is a necessity. Adapting to volatile markets, shifts in working patterns and social norms – all these factors are accelerating the pace at which our strategic direction must shift.
Whether it is analyzing and improving processes, or COVID-19 necessitating transformation of business models, the importance of Strategy Execution Management has never been more so since the 2008 crash.
While this guide does not provide a step by step system to follow to be successful, it is a collection of resources which will help you to re-evaluate how you manage strategy and move your organization to better serve its customers.
When uncertainty and volatility reign supreme it becomes time to transform our mindset to ensure we’re adaptive to the “no normal” era. Click below to see how.
Strategic management theory begins in the 1950s with well-known thought leaders such as Drucker, Chandler and Ansoff.
Their combined ideas fused business adaptation and organizational structure with corporate planning and decision making.
This fuelled the 1960s enlightenment of strategic thinking, and numerous frameworks, such as:
– Porter’s Five Forces
– SWOT Analysis
– Value Chain Analysis
– VRIO Framework
A rapid influx of theories were born in the proceeding years, with names such as the Boston Consulting Group introducing its revolutionary experience curb analysis halfway through the decade.
In 1970, this growth in interest gave Professor Ellen Earle-Chaffee cause to review and clarify, with the hindsight of near 20 years evolution, what strategic management stood for:
– Adapting the business to its environment
– Agility and complexities require quality, often creative, responses
– Providing direction to the entire business
– Formulating the strategy through process and implementing the strategy’s content
– It can be planned (intended) and unplanned (emergent)
– It will be created at multiple business levels
– It covers conceptual and analytical thinking
Emerging from this point of clarity, Chaffee spoke of two theories of strategy – linear and adaptive.
Linear strategy focuses on sequences. Goals lead to actions and actions lead to results. Results are measured and these feed new goals.
This form of Strategy Execution Management is prescriptive. It leaves little room for creativity or input from those executing the strategy.
At its simplest, it translates strategic management into little more than a tick box exercise.
It is this line of thinking which influences leaders to approach implementation and execution in an autocratic manner.
Adaptive strategy concerns itself with change – organizational processes, structures, skill set and resources.
The change is necessitated by the external environment, which is also the reason for strategic formulation in the first case.
This mindset largely reflects modern management because it is engaging and rewarding.
Leaders take ultimate responsibility for performance, but share passion through effective communication and participatory techniques such as catchball.
Management by Objectives, also Results (MBR), aims to create and align objectives to operational activities, motivating staff by ensuring they clearly know their roles and responsibilities.
The Four Disciplines of Execution - Focus, Leverage, Engagement, Accountability - strips down the complexities of modern businesses to help leaders focus on setting quality objectives.
The Balanced Scorecard is an approach which helps businesses prioritize their objectives around finances, customers, processes and products to deliver superior customer value.
Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures use broad objectives, fixed and measurable goals, strategies to guide action, and measures to give a direct way to monitor performance.
Objectives and Key Results is a goal management system to help your business focus on important results in a transparent and aligned manner across teams and divisions.
Also known as Hoshin Planning, Policy, Goal or Strategy Deployment, Hoshin Kanri is a strategic planning process whereby strategic goals are communicated and translated into action.
A long-term vision for the company’s future – this is based on goals, long-term, and flows from your mission, guiding your strategy and predicting the destination.
The gap between where you want your strategy to take your business and its current state. Also used to analyze internal resource and process.
A technique to understand how value is created in your business, via primary and support activities, leading to an action plan to deliver improvements.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats looks at the internal and external factors, chances for success and threats of failure, giving a general direction for what your strategy should be.
Valuable, Rare, Inimitable and Organized, this tools uncovers the internal resource which can provide your business with a sustainable competitive advantage to be harnessed.
PESTEL identifies external (macro) pressures on your organization, considering Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental (or Ethical) and Legal issues shaping strategic performance.
A participatory technique which sees negotiation and cooperation between divisions, departments and functions to set goals aligned to a strategy.
A diagnostic tool which illustrates your existing strategic environment and the potential future state of the organization should be the strategy be executed correctly.
Sometimes used alongside an operating model canvas, the business model canvas helps you to understand your existing business model and how it creates, delivers and reviews value for customers.
This analyzes a business’ design and readiness for its goals from 7 perspectives: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills.
This aligns strategy to the market, assessing your competition, supply chain, customer power, substitutions and the likelihood of new market players.
A tool to generate a Go To Market strategy, defining Product, Place, Price, Promotion, Physical Evidence, People, and Processes.
In business, as in life, learning from our past actions is an invaluable quality.
In Strategy Execution Management, that means borrowing from the continuous improvement mentality and putting into place measurements, tracking systems and knowledge storing techniques that allow for successes and failures to be analyzed.
Communication is at the heart of a strategic transformation. With learning in your business’ DNA, data will be collected and used to demonstrate performance and improve decision making.
Mutual trust and faith in your direction is formed, and through techniques such as catchball you can build participation in implementation and execution.
With learning and communication in place, your objectives, initiatives, projects and associated tasks will be aligned.
Every team member knows its place in the grand scheme, how their work supports the communal success, and ensures that everyone is on the same page – for their benefit and to the benefit of your business.
Critical thinking is paramount to your strategy’s success. At the planning stage you are asking your leaders to go beyond their existing knowledge of what is possible, all the while challenging team members to reach new levels of performance.
That requires a change in attitude, following the process and best endeavours to truly make breakthroughs.
Without establishing objectives, prioritizing processes to improve, setting targets (and measuring them), all the while securing the right resources to do this, you may wonder how businesses achieve their strategic goals.
Leadership begins at the top. Whether you are the CEO, CSO, COO etc., it is your role to embrace your vision, actively engaged in the planning, implementation and execution of your strategy, all the while balancing participation with management.
Strategic leadership begins with conscientiousness – of your internal and external market, the need for effective communication, tools and planning, all the while focusing the business on its goals.
Inspiring and driven, strategic leaders will touch every part of the conveyor belt, waking up every day knowing that transformation is something to be done, not watched from the sidelines.
While creating a strategy and seeing it through to its execution and realizing its benefits is powerful, unless the direction is influenced by the voices of your customer, it will do little to help you generate more revenue and win hearts and minds.
By understanding the opinions and desires of your customers you can place your organization in a position to systematically deliver what is needed to drive breakthrough change in your products and services.
While there is always the allure of setting hundreds of goals to illustrate success through volume, the Voice of the Customer shapes your logic, shifting it to think of breakthrough goals through the lens of your customer.
Better resource utilization across the business
Realize stronger initiative ROI and benefits
Adopt a proactive, agile approach to delivering strategic goals
Achieve and monitor a balanced project portfolio
Let data drive your decision-making and financial planning.
Motivate your entire staff with better comms, rewards and goal-setting participation.
Upskill staff, lower churn and deliver learning opportunities in Six Sigma, Lean and transformation.
Showcase your people for their creativity and striving for excellence.
Join objectives, people, resource and systems to one goal – your strategy.
1. Autocratic Management
Where strategy is ‘done’ behind closed doors at business retreats among leaders – this makes for limited staff engagement.
2. Bottom-Up Confusion
Where detractors to the strategic vision seek to derail the direction, devoid of accountability.
3. Resource Uncertainty
Where resource cannot be assigned, physical, human, material, financial, to the transformation efforts.
4. Firefighting
Where the strains of daily management cloud the strategic initiative, likely due to reasons 1 through 3.
5. Internal Ignorance
Where leaders plead ignorance to the operational and market realities facing their business.
6. No Implementation
Where the strategic plan is executed without an implementation plan, thereby no resources, metrics or rigor to execution.
7. Improper Systems and Tools
Countless Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, SharePoint folders and A3 sheets of paper are the tools to manage your strategy.
When considering success in the world of Strategy Execution Management, ROI is a key indicator. However, there are other measurements to be made:
1. More engaged, motivated and happy staff
2. A sense of belonging for every staff member, all aligned to your strategy
3. Clarity and transparency of performance – limiting water cooler talk
4. Better served customers make for longer, more valuable relationships
5. Learning from the past embeds every ‘failure’ becoming an opportunity.
of organizations fail to realize the benefits of their strategic portfolio mix
HBR
of companies who improve their customer experience report revenue increase
Forbes
of staff are more engaged when their daily work aligns to their business' mission
IBM
of leaders spend less than an hour each month planning, executing and tracking strategy
Kaplan & Norton
Getting Strategy Execution wrong can have many unintended consequences on the success of an organization. These may be financial, operational or reputational in nature, but are likely to result in questions about the executive leadership’s effectiveness and stewardship.
One such example is the reverse takeover of the software division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) by Micro Focus in 2017.
The graph shows the impact on Micro Focus’ share price over a three-year period, we can see how a strategy – in this case a merger – can be well received by the market, but subsequent failure to execute can cause significant damage to shareholders and corporate leadership.
From jargon busters and case studies to webinars, this is the ultimate source of Strategy Execution Management knowledge.
eBook
Download this eBook to learn how your organization can bridge the gaps between strategy, implementation and execution.
A comprehensive guide to SEM
The ultimate guide to strategic jargon
The future of strategic management
How AI will assist Strategy Execution
Are spreadsheets good enough?
Hoshin v OKR v OGSM
The strategic Voice of the Customer
Leading Strategy Execution
Transformation and the 4th Industrial Revolution
Critical thinking in Strategy Execution
Avoiding strategy deployment mistakes
The 4 types of decision-making
Strategy v Business Policy
Strategic frameworks explained
Strategic implementation matrices
Moving to data-driven decisions
Achieving digital transformation
Agile Strategy Execution
How to assess organizational resources
How to look beyond ROI in SEM
How to use catchball in OKR
Download an x-matrix
Download a root cause analysis template pack
Download a stakeholder engagement template
Is there a better way to execute your strategy?
How to rethink your strategy for the 2020s
Digitalize and centralize your x-matrix plan
What does adaptive strategy really mean?
How to build the business case for strategy software in your organization
Explore how our Strategy Execution Management software will help you
When seeking breakthrough results, step-changes are necessary – in people, processes and systems.
Unfortunately, the disconnect between boardroom strategy and the ‘nuts and bolts’ activities of project management teams within an organization can be a critical weakness in Strategy Execution.
Organizations need tools that cascade vision, strategy and goals throughout the business to ensure alignment and buy-in.
Traditionally, execution has been managed using standalone tools including Excel, Project, PowerPoint, OneDrive and SharePoint, and project management tools such as Trello and BaseCamp, and business analytics modules such as PowerBI.
These tools can be effective when looking after small, local transformation projects; however, when applied to organization-wide Strategy Execution they can quickly become unmanageable, inefficient and ineffective.
Strategy Execution Management software digitalizes your formulation, implementation and execution, making it easier to manage each element central to your success, all from one location.
Real-time visibility into the progress of strategic initiatives promotes a counterbalance to the pressure of day-to-day operations.
Focus enables organizations to achieve more while doing less, and Strategy Execution software gives us the tools to achieve this.
Strategy Execution software enables management to assign ownership and accountability to individual resources, tying them into execution.
Test and review assumptions and direction, and course-correct by using one platform to close the loop between action, performance, feedback and correction.
Plan, execute and track your strategic objectives, initiatives, projects and daily activity in one system, institutionalizing knowledge from experiences.
Remain agile to your environment with planning states, using existing data and predictive analytics to feed an adaptive strategy.
Discover how the i-nexus Strategy Execution Management platform is the complete solution to managing the end-to-end process of strategy and aligning your entire business to your strategy.
Discover how the i-nexus Strategy Execution Management’s platform revolutionizes your Strategy Execution, offering the leading solution to successfully plan, execute and deliver on your transformation goals.
Learn how i-nexus digitalizes and centralizes your Strategy Execution Management, ensuring you centralize your activity and make informed, data-driven decisions to bring about strategic success for your organization.
Read how Syntegon automated manual performance reporting and traced objectives and projects with i-nexus
Read how Wabtec replaced their spreadsheet patchwork with i-nexus and automated their processes
Read how FSN Capital replaced spreadsheets with a collaborative i-nexus solution that simplifies policy deployment
Book a demo to see how the i-nexus Strategy Execution Management platform works for your organization, applying your methodology and with your strategic targets in mind.
