The Language of Strategy 2 Execution

Hard to Execute Your Strategy When You Lose Your Hard Drive1
ronald.lamb posted in Challenges, Life Lessons & Execution on June 7th, 2007

It’s hard to execute a strategy when all of a sudden your hard drive crashes. It’s happened to me a couple of times now. No matter how good you are at backing up, it leaves a sinking feeling. “Oh Oh, how much is gone forever, and how much time will it take me to recover anything?”

I came across a great article in Computer World for recovering lost files.

Surviving a home data disaster: How Shirley got her files back: Recovering 736 missing digital images can be arduous — and expensive. Here’s the right (and wrong) way to do it.

I thought I’d pass it along and hope that I save you some heartbreak. It’s enough to say, back up regularly, but when it does happen, here’s a good starting point. Challenges Life Lessons & Execution

Successful Execution of Strategy in Japan (Part 1 of 3)2
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Country Experiences, Life Lessons & Execution, Learning, Knowledge Transfer on October 5th, 2006

We all learn in different ways. One approach says there are three basic learning styles:

• visual, through seeing
• aural, through listening
• feeling, through trying/ doing.

Organizational change usually requires learning something new. In achieving the desired change, the organization has to overcoming real and perceived barriers, and deal with resistance to change.

One of my biggest change management challenges was in Japan some years ago. My firm had sold Cathay Pacific Airlines an airport departure control system. It automated their passenger handling systems. It also handled many of the boring back-office activities, like aircraft weight and balance. That’s a little activity that is carried out before you take off that makes sure that choices of where the fuel, passengers, cargo and bags and stored in the aircraft don’t cause it to tip over or crush the landing gear on landing. In case you hadn’t thought about it, aircraft hit the ground pretty hard, and it is assumed that a certain amount of fuel will be burned off before you land. Otherwise the wheels/ undercarriage will get crushed. Having an aircraft tip-over or crushing the undercarriage on landing is frowned upon by most airlines.

Our firm had already installed the system, tested it and had trained the local Japanese airport staff. Unfortunately, they still reverted to manual check-in and weight/ balance of aircraft on a frequent basis. The executives from the airline started wondering if the problem was with the system. It was difficult to tell from our Amsterdam headquarters if the barriers to success were human, technical or a combination. Other highly competent engineers had gone out before me, to put things right but each time, shortly after their departure, things would fall apart.

I was called on to give it one more attempt before the customer followed through on his threat to throw the whole thing out. I was chosen because of an unusual combination of experience in airline operations, flying (as a pilot), computer hardware and software, end-user training, dealing with management issues, and also the fact that I was the new guy in the Amsterdam office.
Since there was to be no additional options if I failed, whatever I did had to deal with any and all barriers to success. That meant real and perceived barriers, both technical and human.

After three years of working in Latin America, I arrived at my new office in Amsterdam, to be shipped off three days later to Japan. I can tell you it was quite a cultural shock.

My next installment will tell you about the execution challenges that I found. The first month was one of the loneliest times I’ve ever spent, but in part three, “the solution”, I’ll tell you about how I ultimately became ‘accepted’ by the Japanese staff. I’ll explain how together we successfully executed the departure control strategy. It was much more than implementing a system. It became one of the most wonderful of experiences of my life.

Better Execution: Stick to Your Strategy? [Part 2]1
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Performance Improvement, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Guiding Principles, Life Lessons & Execution, Strategy, The Language of Strategy to Execution on September 21st, 2006

Part 2
Yesterday I started with Part 1 of a response to a posting by Rob May of BusinessPundit.com.

“Does Change Help Link Strategy and Execution?”

He’s curious about how companies can improve the link between the two.

Today I’m going to respond to Rob’s second question:

Here are my observations about firms that have a strategy that hasn’t been changed in a long time.

1. We don’t have a strategy: Companies that don’t refresh their strategy for long periods have employees who typically say that they don’t have a strategy. Things change that affect any strategy. Strategies are based on internal goals, external opportunities and constraints. A change to any of these requires an adjustment or re-confirmation of the legitimacy of the strategy. What more often occurs is that change occurs and the famous strategy binder that originally was seen as the holy-grail for the firm is hence forth seen as obsolete.
2. We go off-site once a year to develop our strategy: How wonderful it would be if we could organize all the internal and external changes that have a major impact on our firm to occur just before our annual off-site strategy exercise. We could deal with all of them at once at set our strategic course for the next year. We could then revise our strategy at some nice location each year about the same time.
   “Wait a minute now, that’s what we do now! But we haven’t sorted out how to ensure the only significant change happens before our strategy session.” Employees don’t become complacent with a stale strategy, they ignore it as irrelevant based on accumulated change since it was created and communicated.
3. You can’t master a strategy: As explained above, there is no such thing as “mastery of a strategy”. You can’t go on auto-pilot thinking that you’ve mastered your strategy. Think of how disruptive e-commerce was to the retail industry or personal financial services. Companies like Sears and Merrill Lynch who might have seemed to have ‘mastered’ their strategy had some very hard lessons to learn from Amazon and e-Trade.
4. Complacency comes from believing in your own hype: Yes employees can become complacent in execution. As Jim Collins suggests, it comes from a failure to face the brutal facts. Some organizations breed and work on sustaining an incredible story about their capabilities and success. They loose any real ability to tell when they’re dead wrong. When the imagined reality varies from the real situation, it seems to be the time to hold on to the myth even harder than before. Believing in the myth of being successful in execution allows you to ignore change around you. It allows you to avoid figuring out what you need to change to remain successful.
   
   The worst case of it I ever experienced was with DEC (Digital Equipment Corp). They were the most famous mini-computer vendor in the 1970’s and 80’s. In the early 1990’s as head of sales for a division of Westinghouse, I brought them in as a partner during a negotiation for a $100 million outsourcing deal. We were selected and were going through contract negotiation and a detailed examination of the deal. The client had a number of concerns that they wanted addressed by very senior DEC executives with DEC’s commitments put into the contract. The DEC executives were so insulted by the questioning of their capabilities, that they treated the client and their questions with unhidden contempt. To my shock, one senior DEC even resorted to calling one of the clients a @#@$&! idiot to their face for asking some questions about their ability to deliver their services. Needless to say the client ultimately broke off negotiations. The DEC executive point of view was that the clients were idiots for not taking the deal. Their own hype about their capabilities was much more real and important to them than examining the client’s sense of risk. Needless to say my experience wasn’t unique. DEC ended up breaking up their organization into parts and selling it off bit by bit until it was gone.

• What is success, if you continuously change your strategy?
• What is successful execution when you don’t get to complete projects and achieve targeted outcomes?
• What is success when you don’t update your strategy?

My short definition of execution is: Leveraging the assets that you have available, to achieve targeted outcomes.
Successful execution is: meeting expectations in the execution of targeted outcomes. In order to execute a strategy you translate it into targeted outcomes.

Summary of Suggested Rules:

1. A strategy that changes too often puts initiatives and execution in disarray.
2. A strategy that changes too infrequently becomes irrelevant. The targeted outcomes and their associated initiatives are relevant by chance rather than by design.
3. Few organizations can change their strategy at the speed of change. Most strategies reside in binders and PowerPoint presentations. They are not easily altered, and rarely read.
4. Organizations can translate their strategy into targeted outcomes. It allows the organization to modify these targeted outcomes and their associated initiatives at the speed of change. Execution stays relevant.
5. Strategy as translated into targeted outcomes can exist at any level of an organization. Targeted outcomes are the object of successful execution. The above rules apply to execution at any level of an organization.
Challenges Execution of Strategy Guiding Principles Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) Life Lessons & Execution performance improvement strategy The Language of Strategy to Execution

Better Execution: Change Your Strategy? [Part 1]0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Performance Improvement, Organization Change, Expectations, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Life Lessons & Execution, Strategy on September 20th, 2006

Rob May of BusinessPundit.com, poses a really interesting question in a Blog posting.

““Does Change Help Link Strategy and Execution?”

He’s curious about how companies can improve the link between the two. The key question he poses is:
By consistently changing your strategy, do employees become more focused on the execution of it? Do changes in strategy lead to better execution?
I’m going to give my response to his interesting question in three parts.

Part 1:

• Too frequent change in strategy hurts execution success.

Part 2:

• Employees don’t become complacent about execution due to infrequent change in strategy.
• You can’t master a strategy.

Part 3:

• A famous Harvard University study, known as the Hawthorne Effect, may actually suggest that you can get better execution if you change strategy often.

Part 1

“By consistently changing your strategy, do employees become more focused on the execution of it? Do changes in strategy lead to better execution?”

This is a great question. It may seem like the answer is straight forward, but there is an interesting wrinkle based on a famous, Harvard University study. I’ll return to this study after reviewing the obvious response. I think most people would immediately answer that changing the strategy frequently will lead to poor execution. Here’s are some reasons why:

1. Uses up key Resources: Creating a coherent strategy is management intensive work. It eats up leadership time and focus. Refinement of a strategy is fine since it supports existing momentum. Changing strategy requires serious analysis, building of the end state and all the efforts necessary to gain agreement, communicate it, and build the plans to achieve it. Execution suffers due to management focus on the strategy rather than execution.
2. Wait and See: Critical work and decisions get delayed during strategy formulation work, as employees “wait and see which way the strategy goes”. “There is no reason to start some critical initiatives if they are associated with the new strategy, is there?” Execution gets delayed.
3. More Project Start-up Time: In many organizations a large majority is project oriented and doesn’t know what the strategy is. What they want is a good definition of the project they’re supposed to accomplish. Changing strategy means changing requirements. Execution suffers as projects associated with the former strategy have to get turned off and project resources released. New projects take time to get started as resources become available. Value isn’t achieved until the project team is providing deliverables that combine with other projects to create value. Execution suffers.
4. Feeling that You’re Delivering Value is Destroyed: Teams like to accomplish their project scope, on-time, on-budget. It’s what they get rewarded for. Changing people’s projects regularly doesn’t let them accomplish much. It is hard to be proud of being part of continuously partially completed projects. Execution suffers as team member’s sense of the value of accomplishment is destroyed.
5. This Too Shall Pass: When strategy changes frequently, it is tough to measure people and the value they are delivering. They start to understand that they’re not measurable. They realize that management has no ‘stick-to-it-ness’. People nod at all the right places when asked to change, but then do nothing. No one will check and they believe any change won’t be sustained anyway. It will go back to business as usual. “This too will pass” becomes the reaction to requests to change.

Part 2 Continues tomorrow.

Did You Just Volunteer for Some Work?0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Resource Management, Relative Importance, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Life Lessons & Execution, Strategy on September 7th, 2006

We don’t generally think of corporations and government organizations as volunteer organizations, but stop and think about it. How much of where you allocate your own time is influenced by what you choose to do. Probably more than you’d like to admit. We seek to get on projects that interest us. In that way we are volunteering our time.
As a leader, you’re much more likely to get people to voluntarily contribute their time, skills and money if they can sign up to help achieve a targeted outcome rather than sign up to execute a project.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to speak to, and in some cases work with, the leaders of organizations that rely on volunteers to achieve their strategic goals. They’ve ranged in size from a single leader and advisory board for a professional services community (PSVillage), to a large open source application development group (Wordpress), to the Department of Energy and a number of America’s largest energy firms. In each case we talked about what their goals were and how they were going about achieving them. In most cases they identified a series of projects that they wanted to get done. They also all had limited resources for the size of their targeted objectives. None of them had any way to ensure long-term commitment from participants. It would be huge value to them to be able to increase the level of volunteerism and sustained commitment to the targeted objectives.

Volunteers start with high energy and high estimates of the time and resources they commit to. Lack of progress, frustration and lack of control over their ability to achieve success cause their commitment to wither. As a result execution success is unpredictable. Leaders have to be ever optimistic and to some degree charismatic to continue to attract and retain volunteers. On the other hand, they also have to be realistic and level-headed to continuously deal with the logistics and disappointment of incomplete or missed commitments and execution failure.

What none of them had figured out was how to effectively connect willing contributors with what needs to be done. They had no effective way to connect resources to work, other than through identified projects. This isn’t very different than what occurs in any organization. The only difference is that in traditional organizations, managers direct their people to work. They too had been directed by higher-level managers and their performance objectives. The larger the organization, the more layers are involved. In volunteer or membership based organizations, the link between work and resources is mostly one to one. Each volunteer can decide for themselves where they’d like to participate.

The approaches taken by the organizations I spoke to were each project based. The leaders had defined the projects they felt were necessary. They identified them to their pool of potential volunteers in the hope that they would be taken up by a volunteer or member. I was able to work with the Department of Energy and the energy firms to shift their thinking first to outcomes and only then to projects. They were able to create a roadmap that all understood. There was a renewed commitment to a high-level targeted outcome. They developed a logical process for aligning volunteer activity to the most important interim outcomes. For the others, they will get great value if they can start to identify targeted outcomes and their linkage to higher level targeted outcomes.
This will provide volunteers and their organization with the ability to:

• Understand which are the most important outcomes.
• Choose or influence their participation in the outcomes that they are most attracted to and can achieve.
• Understand how that contribution supports the highest level outcome of the organization.
• Understand wider context through being aware of the surrounding targeted outcomes, and so cooperate on their achievement.
• Use their own skills to design the project / actions necessary to achieve a targeted outcome.
• Provide an opportunity for greater emotional investment and sense of achievement in reaching a targeted outcome.
• Provide sustained commitment, to achieve various projects necessary to achieve a targeted outcome.

For volunteer organizations, corporations, and governments you can increase the success level of execution by getting greater commitment to the most important outcomes and attract sustained participation. These are invaluable in all of these ‘volunteer’ organizations, just like the one you’re in.

Curling in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) Africa circa 19823
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Country Experiences, Life Lessons & Execution on July 31st, 2006

This the second installment sharing a personal work experience having worked in over 45 countries. One picture that keeps coming back to me is about execution in the Cote d’Ivoire. (Don’t worry, no one dies).

I was a project manager for Raytheon in the early 1980’s. The airport manager for Air Afrique in the Ivory Coast was one of my clients. I spent about 3 months installing an airport departure control system for their main airport. French is the local language, which I spoke well, but with a limited vocabulary. But, one day my language skills completely failed me. My client also owned a restaurant and part of the deal was that I would eat all evening meals there. This particular evening there were a large number of French colleagues, their wives and my host. We were having a wonderful time, and with a few glasses of wine, my French was almost fluent. I was excited to tell them that I’d made the most fantastic discovery that day. There was Curling in Abidjan.

The Intercontinental Hotel had connected to it, a skating rink. I was told that, at that time, it was the only skating rink in all of Africa. Not only that, but it also had markings under the ice for Curling! Every second Tuesday a group of expats gathered and played curling. Beyond that, I was at a loss how to explain the game in French. There was no other option. With great excitement I invited my dinner table to come to the next curling bonspiel two weeks hence.

Here is what the Duluth Curling Club says about curling: “The strategy of positioning rocks as the end develops is extremely subtle, and is what makes curling a lifelong obsession for some people. It has been called “chess on ice”. … Above all else, curling is game of skillful execution of strategy.” That’s right Curling is a game of skillful execution of strategy. I hadn’t known that my years of curling in my teens would be a foreshadowing of my life work!

I had a trip back to Amsterdam, where I was living, and secured the right footgear for my grand entry into the world of African curling. I arrived at the rink duly attired and was made Skip of my team of four, which meant I was the last to throw a rock. (see the photo). I’m sure that I had an audience of fifty locals and expats. Many of them were ready with cameras to capture my first rock thrown in Africa. I have to say that I was excited and confident of my skills. Six other players each threw two rocks before it was my turn. As skip, I had demonstrated my strategic abilities and had created a difficult situation for my competing skip. It was now my turn to execute. I made my way with great speed, and elegance down the ice, pushing with one foot and sliding with the other.
As I prepared to squat down into the “hack” to take my shot, I took one last look at my audience before squatting down to execute, to throw my stone, and achieve our team’s strategy.

The next thing I heard was roaring laughter. As I had squatted down to take my first shot, my pants split with a great ripping sound. If you look at the photo, you can actually see a small sliver of white in a strategic location. That is where a cool breeze confirmed what had just happened. There was nothing to do about it, except continue playing amid the flashing of the cameras my friends had all brought. You might have even seen the reflection of my red face in the ice that day.

Curling; it’s all about strategy and execution. Sometimes execution takes some unusual turns. As far as I know they’re still playing curling in Abidjan.

Mexico: Have you ever been to Acapulco? Do you know how to drive a stick shift?0
ronald.lamb posted in Country Experiences, Life Lessons & Execution on July 16th, 2006

This is the first of a number of personal stories that I’m going to share in this Blog. I’ll look for links to execution, but in large, they’re going to be about the wonderful experiences that I’ve had working around the world over the past 30 years.

By a set of coincidences, my first job after university was working for Raytheon in the airline industry. I caught the airline industry bug and loved the life that it offered. For many years I traveled, worked and lived all over the world. I’ve long since expanded my work experience beyond the travel industry, but it was my ticket to the world. At last count I’ve worked or lived in over 45 countries.

One of the most generous work experiences I ever had occurred very early in my working career. It had a major impact on the way I treated my customers/clients and as a result how they were able to execute.

I was working as a customer engineer for Raytheon in Mexico City. We were automating airports and reservation systems across the country for AeroMéxico and Mexicana Airlines. I was just about to step into the twilight zone of ultimate customer experience.

As part of this Blog, I thought it would be fun to let you get to know some of the wonderful people I’ve met all over the world. They’ve had a profound affect on my insights into the execution of strategy. I’ve met some wild people and been in a number of tight spots too as wars started or insurgencies boiled over.

Acapulco Mexico

It was 1976, I was 22 years old, and had just flown in to Acapulco from Mexico City to fix some sort of computer problem at the airport. It is no small thing to have the check-in system for the main airline in Acapulco to stop working. I managed to get it going fairly quickly and was finished by about 5 pm. The airport manager, a cosmopolitan looking man about 35 was very relieved. As the chaos started to recede he asked what my plans were. It was a Friday and I’d left straight from the office to the airport with just what I was wearing. I had just planned on taking the next flight back to Mexico City.

I’d just started with Raytheon and this had been one of my first jobs as a customer service engineer. Hearing that, he told me that there was no way that I was leaving that evening without him having the chance to thank me. He insisted on taking me out on the town that evening. It was to be a welcome to AeroMéxico, who was to be my main client for the next few years. Now I have to say, I’d never met him before, and this was one of my first business trips anywhere with my new job with Raytheon. I thought what a nice welcome. I was pretty dirty from having worked on their computer (they were open to the elements in those days), so wasn’t sure what to do between 5 pm and when he would meet me. In Acapulco, going out for the evening means starting at 11 pm at the earliest.

He must have seen my blank look and his face brightened! “Ah, that’s right, it’s Friday, and there won’t be any hotel rooms in town (Acapulco) tonight or tomorrow. I can see your problem”. He took out a business card and just wrote on the back of it. “Please look after Sr. Lamb”, and then his signature. He then told me to go to one of the biggest luxurious hotels in Acapulco and show them the card.

As I looked at the card I tried to imagine as a 22 year old, going to one of the most expensive hotels in Acapulco. I knew there would be no rooms, and they would cost more than I had. I was to show them the card and had no idea what would occur. He then brightened again and said, “You don’t have a car do you”? Of course I didn’t. He said, “You know this is Friday, there won’t be a single car available to rent to get into central Acapulco”. It was about a 40 minute drive along a windy coastal road in those days. “Can you drive a stick shift”? I could, but had no idea where the conversation was going. He reached into his pockets and threw me the keys to his car. “Here, take mine, I’ll get a ride in with one of the other employees later. Show the card to the hotel check-in desk and they’ll find you one of the ‘non-existent’ rooms and give you an airline employee discount. Take the card to the gift shop and get some clothes for going out, and get a bathing suit and enjoy the pool”. He then headed back to the chaos that was now receding and I headed off along the windy road in his Volkswagen Beetle. All of this and he’d never met me before. I finally made it around one last curve between the coastal mountains and Acapulco Bay to see the skyline of fancy hotels. Boy was I elated.

Everything occurred as he said. I got a room immediately like I was their most important customer. I got some clothes at the gift shop with a steep airline employee discount. There was a message waiting for me that he had to go home first and would meet me later at one of Acapulco’s famous discos. I arrived there to see a long line of the rich and famous. I was again to use his business card with his short introduction on the back. I made my way nervously towards a big tough looking guard at the door, who looked at me, a gringo, with a stern look. He took the card and twisted it around in his huge hands. He looked back at me and you might have imagined that we were long lost cousins for the way he greeted me and ushered me in. I was pretty much in shock at what had been happening for the past few hours. He arrived an hour later and we had a wonderful time. It seemed every beautiful woman at that disco knew him and wanted to stop by and say hello.

I was pretty shy at the time, but have to say that as a young Canadian, just starting a new job, in a new country, with no girlfriend at the time, things were looking up.

p.s. Was my job in Mexico like this all the time? I have to say that in retrospect that was just the beginning of a wonderful ride.

Did this experience affect the way that I treated AeroMéxico as a client? You bet it did.

I would do anything at any time to day or night to make them happy. As a customer, you too can have an incredible impact on the way your vendors or partners treat you. Is that important in execution? There is no question that I ran faster, tried harder and didn’t give up on the toughest problems that occurred while AeroMéxico was my customer. As a result they were able to execute and achieve their targeted customer outcomes. And I loved just about every minute.

I had many exceptional experiences while living in Mexico and some really terrible ones. It’s interesting as I reflect on it. The really terrible experiences were actually most often with foreigners who were also living in Mexico at the time. I can say that I came to truly love Mexico, its people, its culture and will always have a special connection to it. My wife and I consider the possibility of retiring there.

My plan is to use Sundays as a time to write a story about a different country and how it has affected my thoughts on execution. They won’t always be as happy as this one. I’ve been in some pretty scary places too and plan to share those experiences too.