Digital Management as Strategy- Change-Performance Management Continuum

Performance-based management requires that the communication and measurement of performance are an integral part of an ongoing process and not an annual, quarterly, or monthly event.

Enterprise performance management is about how organizations manage performance at both strategic and operational level to achieve well-set business goals and objectives. There is a danger of not having a process to "develop and nurture" performance. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. Here is a logical scenario of running a high performance business as strategy - change performance management continuum.

Translating strategy into operational terms and evolving digital flow: A coherent digital company has a deliberately close alignment among the company’s strategic direction. It means how to translate strategy into operational activities, make the strategy everyone’s daily work and a continual process mobilizing change through digital synchronization. Strategy and its agent business architecture, are building a sprinkler system; a systematic process for operating in consistent or defined operation in line with executive intent. More specifically, business leaders define the operational box that the company works within the strategy, its most distinctive capabilities, and most or all of its products and services, to execute capability-based strategy. They define what initiatives they are willing to fund to get there. What-how transition is simplistic, but extremely powerful key to many things.

Aligning the organization to create synergies: With “VUCA” digital new normal, you can’t predict every turn or curve that the business will face, you need to enable the desirable emergent business property, enforce the broader scope collaboration and creates synergy for achieving high performance business results. To create synergy, unlock performance and unleash digital potential, businesses need to fine-tune their organizational structure and organizational system in achieving high performance and reaching the next level of maturity. Cost-efficiency only is not equal to gaining business synergy. Concentrate on the multitude of business systems - cultural system, moral system, social system, material system, functional system and the holistic digital ecosystem. Synergy creation requires organizational structure tuning, as well as identifying and developing core competency to get future ready.

Making strategy everyone’s everyday job and a continual process: Strategy is a shareware, not shelf work, ensuring key stakeholders are bought in, aligned and equipped to execute and ensure value/benefits/outcomes are realized. When the strategy is under-communicated and employees are not onboard, the strategy is just a mirage. The top reason why strategy implementation fail is because they were not actionable from the get-going. Strategic plans need to get to the level of specifically achievable goals via “5W+1H” navigation, such as "Who is doing what, with whom, how are they doing it and when does it need to be started and finished by." Running a business is an iterative strategy management and performance management continuum, while performance management facilitates the flow of the right information to the right people at the right time to get these questions' answers, to help and coordinate your strategy, tactics, and risks.

Mobilizing change through executive leadership anticipation, monitoring results and act: Strategy Management and Change Management often goes hand-in-hand. Traditional Change Management is often process-driven, but digital change management has to be people-centric. Change comes from within the hearts and minds of the people. 

The most challenging aspect of any change management plan is to gain engagement with the workforce. For change to be embraced by stakeholders, they ultimately need to understand why it is an improvement and what it will improve for them. Organizations can make major leaps forward in developing change capability and capacity by involving the entire organization in major change efforts that support key business strategies to drive performance improvement and increase system resilience. 

Change Management has to make an objective assessment of whether change efforts achieve the expected business results. At the end of the day, change is never for its own sake, it’s about business improvement or innovation. It’s important to take the logical scenario, apply the right strategy and methodology to take change efforts in a structural way. Change is never for its own sake. It’s also important to establish a future state and understand the intended outcome of the future state. Change Management, therefore, should be an adequate, logical, and systematic effort to any environmental shift.

The business management is, in essence, the strategy management, change management and performance management continuum. Digital management should take a holistic approach, to connect all important dots, with multifaceted perspectives. Performance-based management requires that the communication and measurement of performance are an integral part of an ongoing process and not an annual, quarterly, or monthly event. The holistic and iterative performance management approach means to align the strategic level of measures with operational level metrics and manage business performance as an iterative management continuum.

Posted in: Change Management,Performance Master