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

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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