The Language of Strategy 2 Execution

7 Steps to Eliminate Your Organizations’ Sacred Cows0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Business Transformation, Challenges, Organization Change, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), The Language of Strategy to Execution on September 12th, 2006

The University of Michigan, surveyed 308 executives during 2005 on the variables that were most likely to derail their strategy. The variable chosen most frequently, by 38% of the respondents was, was “their Company’s Past / Habits”. That seems to suggest either an unwillingness or lack of a capability to address these habits. In many organizations these are also called the sacred cows or “the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about’’.

Jim Collins has it right in his best seller “Good to Great”. One of the most important habits for a great company is to “Face the Brutal Facts”. One set of facts that few mature organizations face is the entrenched habits that hold them back from high achievement.

It is absolutely possible to change deeply entrenched organizational habits. I worked with a business unit of a large firm that needed to address this issue head-on. They were given five years to achieve a production target well above their historic ability, or risk being sold. They desperately needed to depart from their past, from the habits that had held them back.
They were going to need everyone’s maximum effort to achieve the target. That meant ensuring that everyone was on the same page, committed to the same objectives. We decided to identify to the whole management team what we believed were the problem habits and how they were directly linked to achieving the targeted outcomes. We then showed the actions we wanted people in the organization to take. In many cases this meant changes to deeply rooted leadership practices. The top leadership team had to lead by example. The process gave license to all of the team to ‘correct’ their peers when they were using behaviors that propped up the old habits.

They also embraced a reporting mechanism that would provide the full organization with visibility on progress. It showed that the leadership was serious about change.

The result was a great success. It was especially rewarding to hear the team formally declare when any of the ‘bad’ habits was sufficiently eliminated. It was then removed as a risk to success on the execution roadmap.

The method can work for any sized organization. To achieve the same result here are seven steps to follow;

1. Identify the habits you’d like to change (free flowing interviews using a trusted third-party works best),
2. Identify the root cause of the habits (to ensure you don’t just end up hiding the symptoms),
3. Put in place outcomes and associated initiatives to remove the cause of those habits.
4. Structure a logical diagram to communicate the links between the main program’s targeted outcomes, the habits you want to remove and the root causes.
5. Put in place a way to track change efforts on the root causes. A modified cause/effect diagram also known as a fishbone diagram works well.
6. Start by coloring the text for all the identified ‘bad’ habits and route-causes in red. When you start working on improving any of them, change the appropriate text colors to orange. When you agree that the cause / or symptom is sufficiently removed, color the text in green. It should also allow you to identify reduction in the visible symptoms that the organization has for so long associated with those habits.
7. This should provide a real sense of accomplishment. Celebrate successes. You should notice fewer grumblings about ‘we’ll never be able to get it done’. It shows the organization;
   • you understand what the barriers are,
   • that they are true impediments to success,
   • that actions are in place and
   • you recognize when there is real improvement.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like further information by using the comment link on this posting.

Business Transformation Challenges change execution Execution of Strategy failure Getting Everyone on the Same Page Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) organization Organization Change performance performance improvement process project strategy success The Language of Strategy to Execution

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

How Many Strategy Binders Do You Have? Get Strategy Out of the Binders0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Challenges, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Strategy on August 31st, 2006

One of the first things that I do with a new client is to ask to see any documents regarding their last strategy. What I get is usually a thick binder or three and some PowerPoint presentations. After studying the binders, my experience has been that if the client had just executed what was in the binders, they’d be way ahead of where they were.

In a recent meeting with the president of a large cable/ telecommunications firm, they voiced the problem in this way. The president had a variety of strategy binders. “We know what to do; we just can’t get it out of the binders”.

When I’ve asked clients what happened with the execution, they have a variety of explanations.

• Something big came along that diverted our CEO’s attention.
• Before we were able to execute the strategy something happened that changed the basic assumptions / context for the strategy.
• The key sponsor left the firm or changed positions.
• We didn’t have sufficient funding to continue.
• We couldn’t get everyone to agree. We were never all on the same page.

Organizations treat strategy as if it were divorced from execution. I just had a long discussion with a partner at one of largest strategy consulting firms about execution improvement approaches. He suggested that a number of the partners in his firm wouldn’t be overly interested in improved execution approaches. They would their focus on anything but the actual formulation of strategy, as ‘below their pay-grade’. They look to others to execute the strategy they’ve created with their clients. What they would likely leave for these other consultants are the famous strategy binders.

Many organizations have one group that develops their organization’s strategy and another group expected to implement it as if the strategy were some sort of static thing that could live in a binder like fish in an aquarium.

When a consulting firm is involved in strategy formulation you’re pretty much guaranteed that a binder is coming. Very few have instructions on how to get the strategy out of the binders. The assumption is that a business case and project plan will do it.
Within the big four consulting firm, where I spent six year doing strategy work, it was the rule that a different group of specialists would be brought in to execute the strategy that was described in the binders. The original strategy team would be off to new client strategy assignments. There is that nagging question of how many people actually read the binder, how many understand it and how what percent of the key execution participants understand it. Anecdotal information would say that very few people understand their organization’s strategy.

There doesn’t seem to be much energy or focus around the despair of “How do we get the strategy out of the binders?” Here are some links to organizations with something to say about getting strategy out of the binders.
Strategy 101: Ten Simple Planning Mistakes to Avoid by Dan R. Dick

I intend to keep this as an ongoing topic and encourage readers to comment with links to material that has something to say about the problem and solutions.

Challenges Execution of Strategy failure Failure Statistics Getting Everyone on the Same Page Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) strategy

Current Execution Methods Can’t Deal with Unpredictable Change: Hope is Not a Method0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Business Transformation, Challenges, Organization Change, Resource Management, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Strategy, The Language of Strategy to Execution on August 4th, 2006

Much of the change in organizations seems be unpredictable to those experiencing it. In those cases where you feel that you are the one instigating the change, it feels unpredictable to those experiencing it. The problem is that the methods and tools we use in the execution are just not up to dealing with unpredictable change.

This is what I believe to be true about organizations, processes and execution during times of unpredictable change and what we need to change.

• Processes move strategies, goals, outcomes or projects toward success. Execution processes are unpredictably subject to change from improvement to organization wide business process re-engineering (BPR).
• People within organizational structures are what drive the processes. These organizational structures are subject to unpredictable change.
• Before execution is complete, anything important being executed will be unpredictably affected by unpredictable process and organization change.
• These changes will directly impact team members working on our projects. With no warning, team members will no longer be able to meet their commitments. They will empathize, but won’t be able to help because they have new commitments.
• It is impossible to eliminate the unpredictability of change. Important execution involves individuals from multiple parts of the organization. No one effectively controls all the resources necessary to achieve success.
• Let’s call each uniquely managed part of the organizational hierarchy a ‘silo’. Each part uniquely controlled by another manager is also a ‘silo’. Each silo can make well intentioned changes to their process, roles, or organizational design. The overall organization may also make change to the complete organization. These changes appear to be largely unpredictable to people trying to execute based on the old ways.
• In execution we rely on managers from other silos to meet their commitments to provide;
• Resources for our projects, and
• Completed projects/ deliverables that are part of our project.
• This reliance on others and the knowledge that unpredictable change is the norm means that in most cases, the common execution method is based on Hope. We don’t control other managers’ resources. We don’t know whether they will successfully deliver a completed project for us.

Cultural norms in most organizations don’t permit detailed questioning by peers on how they’re going to achieve their commitments. Hope remains our most common method of execution.

• Hope is not a Method. To move from Hope towards Certainty in execution requires a new method different than what is being used today. People would like to know in advance whether other managers or team members are at risk of being able to deliver on commitments.

Until organizations choose to find a new method to execute strategies that provides full and continuous transparency on how commitments are being met, Hope will continue to be the execution method for most organizations.

The first five requirements for a new strategy 2 execution method are:

1. A way to get everyone on the same page. There needs to be agreement on what is required to achieve the highest-level targeted outcome.
2. Organization-wide transparency on progress towards the achievement interim outcomes regardless which parts of the organization structure are involved.
3. A flexible linkage between execution processes and organization design that allows for continuous change. People in a changing organization may change reporting structure but not their alignment to targeted outcomes. People may change where they are in the organization, but it is the support of targeted outcomes that is their primary work responsibility.
4. Shift to funding of targeted outcomes rather than projects. This allows outcome owners to shift funds between outcomes and their initiatives to ensure the most important initiatives are funded and have the needed resources. Funding of initiatives over outcomes keeps initiatives that have become less important, funded much too long.
5. An on-going assessment of the health of the overall strategy to execution process. The organization needs to have a point of view on the areas of strength and weakness of the current strategy 2 execution process. Within their span of control, managers can create execution process improvements only when taking into consideration the impact on overall strategy 2 execution success.

Note:

1. Execution sometimes takes place where all the resources are controlled by one person. You can assume that success should be higher in such cases. For example, CEO’s tend to control all the resources. Yet, CEO’s report that well over 50% of strategic program fail to meet their expectations.
2. Some people would say that the method is based on Trust, not Hope. I would claim that it’s only Trust if you have worked with that person before and they have established a track record of meeting their commitments. Otherwise Hope is the method.
3. Organizations will change; sometimes to the better (for you) and sometime for the worse. I doubt that any organizational change is good for everyone at the same moment in time.
4. There are many strategies or projects in progress at any one time. It is impossible to plan process or organizational change to eliminate the impact of change for all strategic programs or projects that are ‘inflight’.

Business Transformation Challenges Execution of Strategy execution process execution processes failure Getting Everyone on the Same Page hierarchies hierarchy improvement Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution) organization Organization Change organizational hierarchy process project Resource Management silo silos strategy The Language of Strategy to Execution unpredictable change work

The Language of Strategy 2 Execution Blog Manifesto0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy, Business Transformation, Challenges, Performance Improvement, Organization Change, Getting Everyone on the Same Page, Expectations, Qualities of Execution, Improving S2E (Strategy to Execution), Guiding Principles, Failure Statistics, Measures of Success, Strategy, The Language of Strategy to Execution on July 29th, 2006

“Strategy 2 Execution” is defined as the single most critical process of an organization. In this context it is not a series of processes that ultimately take you from strategy to execution. This is the overall process. I also use the acronym S2E for it.

I wanted to create a message for first time visitors. It will be kept as a permanent link on the list on the right side of the page. I wanted to set a high bar for what the content was for the Blog. In the following I set out the need for a break-through in successful execution of strategy. I also set out what tests, such a solution has to pass.

Thank you in advance for any way that you contribute to that ‘quest’, whether it is through comments to the postings or by taking advantage of any of the ideas introduced here.

We all have something that is keeping us awake at night. Current capabilities and resources don’t seem to be enough to ensure certainty of successful execution. We have to rely on resources outside our control for our success. Surveys would claim that strategic programs fail well over 50% of the time.

No country or functional group has cornered the market on successful execution. Over the past 30 years I have worked or lived in over 45 countries. I have provided services in management consulting, strategy formulation, business and IT transformations, large program delivery, sales and engineering management. Failure is high everywhere.

A break-through solution that provides a step improvement is needed. Improvement efforts that include book and magazine articles by experts, methodologies, and standards seem to be providing only incremental improvement. They are largely providing high-level leadership ideas or focus on narrowly defined functional areas. We must work on Strategy 2 Execution as a single critical process. There has not been a significant improvement in overall Strategy 2 Execution success in years.

Successful execution is defined as “having met expectations”. We need to be clear about what success is. The bar for what defines success must be set higher than ever. Anything less is an illusion of success.

Here are five tests for a Strategy 2 Execution break-through solution;

1. Improvement is Both Measurable and Intuitively Felt: The definition of success varies widely. What is success for one participant is a failure to another. Measurability is a must but execution is often stopped because sponsors don’t feel that expectations are being met. The solution must address leaders’ intuition as to whether success is being achieved and whether their expectations are being met.
2. It Provides Overall Improvement: Execution improvements in specific functional or process areas sometime occurs at the cost of overall Strategy 2 Execution success. Overall Strategy 2 Execution improvement is what is needed. This will only be achieved by providing a solution that integrates strategy to execution processes with the way people are organized and deployed to work. It must hold overall improvement at a higher value than improvement in a specific area.
3. It is Scalable, for All Types of Execution: We exist in a global, connected world. Any solution must enhance execution across different hierarchies, functional areas, companies, industries, governments and cultures. Major performance improvement will only occur if the solution is scalable starting from individual to multi-party to large scale execution. To be widely adopted, it must be able to be incrementally deployed and serve all types of execution.
4. It Survives Unpredictable Change: Nothing important can be completed anymore before its starting conditions and assumptions change in some significant way. Level of importance, organization design and available resource/ finances will change before execution is complete. Inevitable change is the norm. Strategy 2 Execution must survive this.
5. It Serves Everyone Equally: The solution must be practical, simple to understand and easy to adopt. To be sustainable it must be shared by choice, by all roles, at all levels of the organization. It must serve to get everyone on the same page using a common language that all participants share.

This is the opportunity for leaders of all types to share our passion, curiosity, experience, and simple-to-radical ideas for improving overall Strategy 2 Execution success. Welcome.

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Starting Point: Execution of strategy fails way too often.0
ronald.lamb posted in Execution of Strategy on July 9th, 2006

Enough is enough. My personal experience of execution is that it fails way too often. Organizations are investing in strategies and program management that according to most studies fail more often than not. (More about these studies later)

What must be occurring is that this investment is giving only marginal improvements. This Blog is focused on discussing and creating a store of knowledge and best practices that can provide a step improvement in execution. It is no longer enough to create incremental improvement.

We need executives and program managers to contribute. Strategy to execution takes in all types of participants, from CEO’s to individual contributors. Most new ideas presented through training or literature are aimed at either ‘leaders’ or ‘team members’ but not both. This is a basic flaw and a root cause of failure. We need to understand execution of strategy in the same way regardless of role, seniority, or functional expertise. This Blog will only succeed if all types of participants provide input and challenge ideas.

This Blog is meant to provide you and me an opportunity to raise fresh ideas and seek highly critical points of view on the subject of sustainable step improvements in execution. Welcome to those of you who are distressed at current execution capabilities and are motivated to participate. Goodbye to those of you who don’t see any opportunity to contribute fresh thinking.

I don’t have anything against the training, authors, new practices that are currently popular. It is just that they are mostly aimed at improvement at some sub-level involving the execution of strategy. This approach seems to provide only incremental improvement.

We need a new way to improve the success rate of execution. I believe that can only be done by looking at overall execution of strategy. That is, strategy 2 execution (s2e) as a whole. I will leave it to others to improve the sub-components.

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