If your company falls into this trap, you’re starting at a 10% deficit in terms of the “return on effort” (ROE) required to produce the results you’re seeing. I don’t believe we can ever reduce that number to zero, but a 10% penalty seems too high a price to pay for resources that represent such a big investment for a business.

What can you do? The obvious answer is that you need to look at your data. Have your Black Belts chart their time for a few weeks or even a month, being careful to separate out work that is contributing to improvement (value-add) and work that’s being done just for the business (non-value-add in terms of improvement). Do a Pareto diagram on the latter and look at ways to reduce the burden of the biggest time wasters.

If your company is like many others I’ve seen, it’s likely that the biggest contributors will be tasks such as preparing spreadsheets or updating project records. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions in the market—lean six sigma software or, more generically, performance improvement software—that can reduce that administrative burden significantly. Many have features that can speed up both the value-add work (such as analyzing data) and non-value-add work. And the best-in-class will have features that embed strategic linkages, so with a few keystrokes or mouse clicks you can view not just the results for one project but for all of the projects connected to you strategic initiatives.

If you are disappointed in the ROI from your improvement efforts, maybe a poor ROE is at fault.

Ottinger’s commentary doesn’t really present any breakthrough ideas, but it does reinforce the growing recognition that strategy execution requires rigor and discipline. The work of your strategy development team doesn’t stop once the strategy is developed. You have to make sure you have systems and processes in place that make business strategy execution feasible.

One “secret weapon” cited by Ottinger is having a cross-functional management team that uses a structured process for guiding and monitoring implementation. I agree that having a person or team that is held accountable for results is just as critical for strategy execution as it is for anything important your organization does. But there is an additional dimension you need to consider if you want to be world-class: how to make it as easy as possible for this person or group to do their work effectively. If you’re serious enough about achieving strategic goals to establish groups to oversee the implementation, don’t limit their effectiveness by using information systems better suited to the previous century.

To best coordinate and manage implementation, you need real-time, accurate information on the status of every effort linked to the strategic goals. And they only want to get that kind of information is by using today’s technology. You’ve probably heard some of the labels for this technology – goal management software, Hoshin planning software, six sigma project tracking software, and so on. What they have in common is the ability for any manager at any level to see what projects are in their domain, the status of those projects, and the linkages between the projects and higher-level goals.

Yes, coordinating the strategy execution takes work. And if that work is too difficult and too time consuming, it will get done slowly at best and perhaps won’t get done at all. You will have wasted the energy you invested in creating the strategy in the first place and greatly lowered the odds of achieving your goals. Make sure that the people responsible for implementation in your organization have the tools they need to work fast and effectively.

I probably don’t have to tell you how important predictability can be for a manager. There is so much uncertainty in our world that having the ability to know with any level of confidence that something is… or isn’t… going to happen on-time and in-budget, is a gift. And the more lead time a manager has in making this determination, the more options they will have in terms of reacting appropriately.

Whilst no one has yet invented the perfect fortune teller’s globe for business leaders, there is one area where predicting the future is becoming a reality: business execution. One of the most exciting aspects of new performance improvement software tools like i-nexus’s business execution system is the ability for managers to be able to see farther out into the future with a greater degree of certainty than they’ve ever had before. With real-time updates on project progress, the software can reliably predict whether that project will be on track not just a week or month from now, but 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months out.

This greater predictability gives managers much more time to make adjustments in resources, timing, and budgets so they can still get the business results required of them to meet annual or strategic goals.

Almost 700 people responded via LinkedIn, and 63% of them voted for “Lack of Management Buy-In” as the biggest source of failure. (For comparison, the next-highest response was 13% of the votes cast for “lack of effective coaching.”)

I’m not really surprised that lack of management buy-in came in so far ahead because it’s a common complaint I hear from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners across the globe. But we have to be careful not to interpret that response as blaming management for a lack of commitment to something they see as valuable. What is more likely the case is that the Lean Six Sigma leaders are choosing the wrong projects (and therefore the efforts don’t deserve management buy-in) or they haven’t been able to show that the efforts are, in fact, contributing to business priorities. If you can clearly demonstrate to a manager or executive that Lean Six Sigma success directly contributes to their business success, then lack of buy-in won’t be an issue.

With budgets tighter than ever and a host of newer challenges competing for management attention, it’s up to the Lean Six Sigma practitioners and supporters to make sure that they are selecting high priority projects, and then marshal the evidence that their efforts deserve management attention and support.

Neither of these tasks is easy, but they are more readily accomplished now than they were even a few years ago. New software tools (such as Hoshin planning software and business execution systems) can help you map out projects in ways that clearly establish linkages from the business priorities to project goals, at every level of the organization. Having that linkage is the first step in securing management buy in. The best software tools in this class also help you better communicate with management throughout the organization: you can roll up results and summarize them for senior executives, or dissect them into minute detail for supervisors and frontline managers.

• Lack of alignment between top level corporate strategy and the initiatives which take place at a tactical level
• Management reviews are predominantly focused around lagging measures which measure outcomes, and not leading measures which predict what the outcomes will be
• Organizations are unable to accurately predict the impact that the successful completion of actions will have on the Key Performance Indicators, and ultimately, strategy.

The process of Hoshin Planning or goal deployment, using the powerful X-Matrix, is being implemented by a number of organizations to help address these root causes, however close to 90% of companies are using spreadsheets to manage this and subsequently fail to achieve their goals.

Join me in this one hour webinar and I will discuss the steps organizations can take to address the barriers to effective Hoshin Planning. Click here to register.

Take part in our LinkedIn poll today and the results will be discussed during the webinar.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy holiday over the festive period.

From my own experience, poor strategy execution can usually be attributed to three core problems:

Lack of alignment

More often than not, strategic goals are missed because what senior management thinks is happening in the organization and what actually happens are generally two very different things. But why is this? For many, this occurs because of a lack of linkage between the main methodologies that are used to drive the initiatives. Operational Excellence methodologies, such as Lean and Six Sigma, are excellent at driving action at a localised level, but offer no approach to link back to strategy. Conversely strategy design methodologies, such as Balanced Scorecard, facilitate the design of well-rounded strategies but are unable to offer guidance on how to translate the strategy down the organizational chart.

Review basis

In many large organizations, the management reviews are predominantly focused around lagging measures which measure outcomes, and not leading measures which predict what the outcomes will be. As a result, the information is usually obsolete by the time the reviews actually take place, meaning that the reports in which actions are taken against are inaccurate.

Forecasting problems

Because it is difficult to accurately predict the impact that the successful completion of actions will have on KPI’s (and ultimately on strategy), there is no reliable method of ascertaining if all of the actions will lead to the goals being achieved. More importantly, the lack of reliable forecast information then drives a “reactive” rather than “proactive” reaction, meaning the organizations responds to catastrophes rather than anticipating and overcoming problems.

In order to overcome these issues, organizations need to transform the end-to-end strategy execution processes. There are essentially six steps that can be taken that will ensure successful execution:

1. Translate strategy into actionable priorities – this can be done by utilizing strategy maps to visualize goals and cause-effect relationships, and by using Hoshin Planning and Policy Deployment to translate goals into actions.
2. Define KPIs that will be used to track success and establish the targets over time for these indicators.
3. Ensure everyone is aligned and motivated to deliver the strategy by linking their reward and recognition to the KPIs that will measure the achievement of the goals.
4. Leverage web-based technologies that join up strategic planning, initiative execution and performance management activities, organizations will be able to see and keep on top of who is doing what, what has been achieved and what impact it has made.
5. Change management culture. By this, I mean promote the ‘chief fire prevention officer’ not the ‘chief fire fighter’.
6. Use robust technology platforms to move from tracking performance historically to forecasting future performance based on the projected impact of your improvement actions.

It’s always enjoyable attending these kind of summits, as it gives me the chance to discuss the finer points of Business Execution and to hear first hand the difficulties that are faced on a day-to-day basis by organizational leaders. This year I’m hosting a workshop on the first day (16^th January) of the conference that will address many of the issues faced by organizations when it comes to strategy execution, and give attendees that chance to discuss the difficulties that they face when it comes to goal deployment.

During the workshop, I’ll focus on Hoshin Planning and the ways in which organizations can realize the true benefits of using this methodology. I’ll outline why the vast majority of organizations that implement Hoshin Planning fail to make it work, and detail that ways in which organizations can ensure that they are one of the few that see the step change in results that better execution can deliver.

i-nexus are able to offer delegates a discount off your booking, so to find out more about PEX Week and to secure your place, please click here. Quote reference i-nexus/PEXWEEK

Our next webinar, taking place on Wednesday, 7^th December, will tackle this topic. Hosted by i-nexus Chief Operating Officer Grant Crow, the webinar will address the benefits of using Software as a Service (SaaS) to overcome the most popular reasons for Lean Six Sigma programs failing. Covering issues such as lack of benefit quantification, lack of management buy-in, and a lack of effective coaching, the webinar will address and discuss each issue in detail.

Grant will also talk through the results of the i-nexus poll on LinkedIn, which asks what you rate as the number one reason that you think Lean Six Sigma programs fail, and offer guidance to companies who are experiencing problems in scaling up their Lean Six Sigma Initiative. Why note take part before the webinar?

Click here to register.

Talking from my own experience, the fundamental problem with Lean Six Sigma initiatives is down to the fact that often, there is a disconnect between the priorities of a CEO and the outcome of the organization. Or, put simply, the fight between the urgent and the important. In almost all cases, the urgent will win over the important.

As all Lean Six Sigma practitioners know, Lean Six Sigma has the potential to literally transform the performance of any organization, but as with any critical organizational change, Lean Six Sigma requires leaders to stay engaged in the effort, which doesn’t happen when it’s not at the top of the to-do list. With this as the number one reason, in my eyes, for the failure of many Lean Six Sigma projects, I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the subject.

I also recently released a podcast on how you can make Lean Six Sigma your CEO’s no. 1 priority – Click here to listen to this podcast and others in the series.