i-nexus blog

This is my first blog post on the i-nexus blog, so I wanted to discuss a topic that is very applicable to my every day work: Strategy Formulation and Execution.

All companies, whether it’s a 5 person start-up, or a multibillion dollar Fortunate 500 company have a strategy. This strategy is usually communicated through conference calls, meetings, or emails and can vary in complexity from a simple statement: “Generate 1 million in sales”, to a very detailed goal: “Improve Process 3.2B’s cycle time in Manufacturing Site XYZ”.

I think we can all agree that it can be painful to work at an organization where the overarching strategy is either flawed or for lack of better terms, wrong. But what I’ve found even more frustrating is to work with an organization where this strategy is ambiguous, contradictory, or completely undocumented. The latter is not typical (but certainly still happens) at senior levels of large organizations, however as you cascade down many levels of the organization to the “do-ers” of the company, it is difficult to understand how a goal or objective in a company’s annual report may apply to them.

This is the ultimate gap that many leading academics discuss today: how do you link an organizations strategy to the operational side of the company? In simple terms, when a CEO says “we need to do XYZ”, how do we translate this into the thousands/millions of activities and projects that are simultaneously occurring in large organizations?

This can be broken down into four steps

1. Design: Choose your framework for communicating strategy. Keep it consistent and simple so that ANYONE can understand what it is you’re trying to achieve. There are numerous types of frameworks to support strategy development; the one I’ve seen most successful is the balanced scorecard framework and building a Strategy Map. Test out your strategy maps “legibility” by showing it to project leaders in the company, and have them translate your strategy back to you in simplistic terms. If they can accomplish this, then you’re moving closer to having a solid frame.
2. Accountability: Now that you’ve defined what you need to do, we’ll need to measure your progress towards those goals. The single most important step here is assigning ownership of these metrics to people in the organization. If they are not invested in achieving the strategic targets, then I assure you, the targets will not be met.
3. Execution: This is where you rally the troops to go “make it happen”. Something that is missed in this step time and time again is providing a consistent framework for executing projects in the organization. Improvement frameworks such as Lean Six Sigma can be useful here to guide your project leaders to success. I mean, you wouldn’t want to lead your troops to war without the proper tools to win the battles…
4. Platform: Last, but certainly not least, is providing a technology platform to monitor steps 1, 2 and 3. Something most companies fail to realize is that these pieces are all dynamic and can change in an instant. Without an ongoing circular process for defining, measuring, executing, and reviewing strategy at ALL levels of the company, it will certainly fail and people will just continue to go down the path of least resistance.

Although I have experience in developing all four of these steps, my current role has me focused on the platform side of strategy execution. It’s fascinating to me how many enormous and complex organizations fail to take the final step to success when there are applications that are built specifically to facilitate this process.