The Language of Strategy 2 Execution

The Disconnect between Strategy and Execution2
ronald.lamb posted in Uncategorized, Execution of Strategy, Resource Management, Relative Importance, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Failure Statistics, The Language of Strategy to Execution on June 6th, 2007

There is not enough focused effort to address the gap between strategy and execution. George Ambler’s blog The Practice of Leadership, has found a great survey on the Disconnect between Strategy and Execution. This is a must read for anyone who is looking beyond easy answers. The survey is by OnPoint Consulting and hits a home run in its observations. Most organizations have a strategy that is at least adequate, with some being clear and inspiring. Most organizations have an execution capability with capable people using standard or best practices. Still 49% of firms surveyed see the gap in their ability to execute sound strategies. Of this 49% of firms, 64% don’t have confidence in their ability to close the gap. OnPoint provide a list of eight factors that they feel provide this strategy to execution gap.

I sometimes wish that I could describe just eight things for organizations to change that would close the gap between strategy and execution. What I have decided is that there is another way to look at the strategy to execution gap. It is based on the fact that no organization has enough resources to achieve all their targeted outcomes. Just addressing eight things isn’t always enough. This is a great list and well worthwhile tracking. I’d like to suggest creating a tighter link between specific targeted business outcomes and execution success. What that means is that you have to understand what your targeted outcomes are, the relative importance between them and then apply your resources towards achieving them. Together these begin to create a strategy to execution roadmap. You can then identify those areas of execution risk that need to be managed. This is where you can apply resources to increase the certainty of success.

If you had all the resources you needed to close the strategy to execution gap, you would be moving along a path towards CERTAINTY of success. I believe that no organization will ever have enough resources to achieve certainty. What you have to look for is that point along the path that gives you a sufficient level of certainty for the resources you can afford to commit. To build cross organizational commitment to the success, you can create a visual model of what initiatives you are funding, the resource that are committed that take you along that path. You increase buy-in if you can make these targeted cross organizational outcomes and initiatives visible to all the participants.

If you choose to call your execution starting point “HOPE”, then you have the start of a strategy to execution roadmap. A good model for this is to think of moving your organization along a line from Hope of success to Certainty.

I use the word Hope, because it adequately describes most organization’s execution method. What I mean is that few people own all the resources necessary to achieve any important targeted outcome. You have to rely on other parts of the organization to provide resources to achieve success. Current management processes don’t provide you with sufficient control over all resources needed to achieve key outcomes. You have to Hope that other parts of the organization will meet their commitments to provide committed resources.

Even after resources are committed, you don’t have adequate insight into other parts of the organization’s conflicting demands and priorities. You don’t often have sufficient warning to know when another part of the organization will fail to meet their commitments. As the survey shows, expectations aren’t met at least 49% of the time. (Most other surveys I’ve seen suggest well above 65% of strategic programs fail to meet CxO (CEO, CFO, COO etc.) expectations.

The solution is to find those outcomes and initiatives that will move the certainty of success for targeted outcomes sufficiently along the path towards certainty. For some critical business outcomes that will be very far along the path to certainty. In other cases, your organizational and gut-level experience will tell you that you have a good chance of success given past history. For those outcomes and initiatives, the addition of initiatives to ensure success can be lower.

The great part is that you can balance the need for higher levels of certainty for the most important outcomes against a lower level for less important outcomes. This way you can apply your resources to the most critical outcomes. You can go a long way in building commitment to success by creating this visual line of sight between initiatives that are designed increase success and the targeted outcomes that achieve business value.

Congratulations to George Ambler for finding this great survey and highlighting its value. It’s a must read.

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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.

business context Challenges execution Execution of Strategy execution process failure Getting Everyone on the Same Page Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) Life Lessons & Execution organizational project Relative Importance Resource Management strategy succcessful success The Language of Strategy to Execution work

It’s Hard to Get on the Same Page When Everyone Speaks a Different Language2
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Relative Importance, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Country Experiences, Tower of Babel, Glossary on August 7th, 2006

It is exceptionally difficult getting everyone on the same page to execute a strategy or high-level targeted outcome. It’s especially hard to do when the participants don’t even seem to speak the same language.

I’m Canadian and speak English as a first language. The first time I went to Scotland, I could hardly understand a thing they said, even though we both spoke English. My father’s side of the family originally comes from Scotland, so I somehow thought that it wouldn’t be that difficult. It was.

While I was living in Amsterdam we had a receptionist, Rhona, from Glasgow Scotland. Clients from countries all over the world would call and she was the first person they would speak to. She had the most beautiful voice you’ve ever heard [What I wouldn’t do to figure out how to find Rhona and put a clip of her voice in here for you]. Anyone who didn’t speak English as a first language had a hard time understanding her. We thought of giving her a different job, but never did. Whenever she was away, clients said they hoped she would return soon. They looked forward to her laughter and the lilt of her voice as she tried to figure out who they were and wanted to speak to.

Few of us have such beautiful voices that other people, whose first language is not the same as our own, will take the time to try to understand us. The same is true in organizations.

Businesses slot people into units that have areas of market focus or skills like finance, sales, engineering etc. It is the same for Universities, Governments and other organizations. Each organizational unit speaks its own language. Their language includes their acronyms, processes and even the personal incentives that shape their behaviors.

Each organizational unit emphasizes their differences to demonstrate their area of expertise. We often use the term ‘silos’ when we talk about groups within the same organizational. They are the vertical hierarchies that have a high level of separation and uniqueness of skill and language. These differences make communications between silos very difficult.

How did this all come about? There actually is an origin with the problem and it goes back before Henry Ford started the automated factory. In fact, according to the Bible it goes back to the Story of the Tower of Babel. It seems it was all the fault of the Babylonians.

At the time we were all descended from Noah and spoke the same language. The people of Babylon started constructing a building that would reach all the way up to heaven. Talk about being upset. God was so put out that he came up with a really inspired punishment for mankind. He made everyone start speaking different languages. You can imagine that it became impossible for anyone to work together. They could no longer finish building the tower. This is the origin of the word ‘babbling’. Now you know why you can never understand engineers. There are wonderful paintings of artists’ ideas about of all the crazy building problems that occurred.

I’m an engineer and apologize on behalf of all other engineers for speaking in ways that most people can’t understand. Who is going to speak up and apologize on behalf of doctors, accountants or lawyers?

To this day we are still trying to construct towers of Babel for our organization. It appears that we’re still suffering for the Babylonian’s mistake. Attempts by countless managers over the past hundred years haven’t helped much us get on the same page, to understand each other. Many organizations seem to have given up entirely trying to get their people on the same page.

A level of commitment is required for those organizations that truly want to get everyone on the same page. If there is commitment, then there are a few ideas that do seem to significantly improve the ability for different groups to work together on execution. Most surveys would put place getting everyone on the same page at the top of the list for enabling successful execution. Let’s start there.

You have to start being more precise in your language about what common execution words actually mean. It isn’t that difficult if you start with this small set of words and phrases. Just try be very consistent in their use. Here are the most important three words to use with a consistent meaning:

1. Outcome
2. Relative Importance
3. Initiative or Project

Three Quick Ideas for How to Get People on the Same Page with these Words:

1. Draft up an Outcomes Roadmap before or During Discussions

Draft a picture that on the right side of the page shows the highest-level common outcome. Working from right to left, draw the interim outcomes necessary to achieve the outcome above it. Use a sufficient level of detail to make who you’re talking to comfortable that the outcomes they are interested are also included.

Creating it together increases shared ownership of the outcome roadmap. The outcome descriptions should be in language that everyone understands. Use it again and again as the basis of ongoing conversation as things change.

2. Talk about Relative Importance instead of Priorities

No one has enough resources to plan and execute every initiative that is likely to be identified. Use the roadmap to gain agreement on the relative importance of the outcomes. For example, there may be three interim outcomes necessary to achieve the next highest outcome. Decide together what the relative importance is of each of the interim outcomes. Which are relatively more important to achieving the next highest-level outcome? This way you don’t have three outcomes all high priority. Each one is relatively more or less important than the others.

3. Talk about Outcomes before Initiatives or Projects

Talk about targeted outcomes before diving into the projects designed to achieve them. Outcomes tend to have descriptions that everyone can understand rather than unit specific jargon that initiatives tend to be described with. The previously shared understanding of outcomes increases shared understanding of initiatives.

Just using these three ideas will move you much further toward getting everyone on the same page. This is a great step forward in achieving increased success in execution.

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Business Context Changes Faster Than You Can Execute Anything Important.0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Performance Improvement, Resource Management, Relative Importance, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Expectations, Qualities of Execution, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Guiding Principles, Strategy, The Language of Strategy to Execution on August 1st, 2006

One of the primary guidelines I share with clients is;

Business context changes faster than you can execute anything important.

How relevant is that?

I just had a long term colleague depart from a senior corporate position. I asked him if he saw any warning signs. Apart from the reorganization that was the triggering factor, he saw a recurring theme.

The CEO would set out a new initiative for his department. They would work on it, and as they were nearing completion provide some initial feedback to the CEO. The CEO would let him know that it was no longer that important, and set out a new task. After enough of these episodes, he lost a sense of accomplishment and contribution.

This scenario is not unique to my colleague. Many organizations have similar issues.

Here are five lessons to be learned by any organization for dealing with the speed of change.

1. You can’t successfully operate a business with executives focused on initiatives. They need to be focused on targeted outcomes, which is a translation of how the strategy can be achieved. A strategy doesn’t change nearly as often as initiatives.

   With a defined, narrow, set of high-level targeted outcomes, it is possible to define the additional necessary interim outcomes. An executive can then determine the initiatives necessary to achieve that outcome. As conditions inevitably change, the executive can shift to more appropriate initiatives. This makes better use of key resources.

2. Use a shared method to communicate the agreed upon relative importance of the top-level targeted outcomes. No organization has enough resources to achieve all the outcomes necessary to carry out a strategy. There must be agreement on the starting point for the relative importance of outcomes. This is what in turn points you towards the initial set of approved initiatives. The problem is that business context changes faster than you can execute anything important. Midstream you’ll to have to shift resources to the initiatives that support the now more important outcomes.
3. Changed business context forces a change in execution behavior. For example, after some business change, you might be required to achieve the original targeted outcome:
1. With an even higher level of performance
2. sooner,
3. at a lower cost, or with reduced management attention,
4. with greater certainty of success,
5. with a wider reach to increase the area of impact
6. with greater buy-in,
7. with increased sustainability or
8. with greater measurability and transparency of progress.

I call these “Qualities of Execution”. Any change between behaviors you used when you started execution to one of the new Qualities of Execution™ requires potential shifts. These shifts can be in many areas e.g. behavior, process, technologies, partnerships etc.

4. Keep everyone on the same page. People learn about change at different times, in different ways. Their managers interpret the impact of change for their team members, and they interpret what their manager has told them. The organization must have a method to identify and communicate how a changed business context impacts the high-level outcomes and Qualities of Execution. Otherwise targeted outcomes will not be achieved. That’s what seems to have happened with my colleague. Failure statistics for strategic programs are well over 50%.
5. Manage down conflicting execution behaviors. Based on continuous interpretations of new business context, managers and team members change their expectations on how execution will occur and what the final results should be. Hopefully this means team members will change their execution behaviors. We all have met those people who don’t or won’t change their behavior regardless of the situation. They’re not reading this anyway and will randomly disrupt execution when their behavior is at odds with the desired Qualities of Execution.
   

   You must keep everyone on the same page as per the point above. You can then identify the desired Qualities of Execution for everyone at the same time, in the same way. You now stand a chance of having complementary behaviors and increase the chance of successful execution.

   Seeing conflicting behaviors is more often the case. You can imagine team members or a sponsor working differently to achieve an outcome;

   • as fast as possible, and another
   • at as low cost as possible, and another
   • with as much buy-in as possible.

These conflicting behaviors lead to dysfunctional inter-actions and increase the likelihood of failed execution.

Here are six steps you can follow to deal with the speed of change.

1. Start with everyone on the same page. Create an Outcomes Roadmap. Translate strategy into targeted and interim outcomes. They’re more executable than a thick strategy binder or PowerPoint presentation.
2. Assign outcome coordinators to ensure accountability. Outcomes use resources from all over the organization. One person needs to coordinate achievement of each outcome on behalf of the whole organization.
3. Focus on the most important things. Identify the relative importance of outcomes and the initiatives that support them. Attach resources to the most important outcomes. Manage how importance changes over time and shift resources as needed.
4. Keep everyone on the same page. Use multiple types of media to communicate the updated Outcomes Roadmap. Use gaps in achievement of targeted outcomes rather than initiatives as the focus of status reports and meetings.
5. Manage changing expectations and desired behaviors for success. Change occurs and is communicated through the Outcomes Roadmap. Use it to identify the Qualities of Execution that drive desired behaviors for execution success. Talk about the desired execution behaviors in your teams as they are required to change.
6. Translate wins into normal operations. Deal with diminishing returns when nearing completion of an outcome. Be prepared to capture value and shift resources. Make management status meeting more effective by reduced reporting on historic important outcomes as outcomes of higher importance eclipse the old.

I’ve introduced these steps to many clients. They can be adopted by individuals for their own targeted outcomes, by project teams on a targeted outcome, or for an organization trying to manage multiple competing critical outcomes.

All of the above is required. The days of completing a project before the business context changes are long gone.

Challenges Execution of Strategy Expectations Getting Everyone on the Same Page Guiding Principles Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) performance improvement Qualities of Execution Relative Importance Resource Management strategy The Language of Strategy to Execution