Insightofstrategy

The question about strategy and implementation is very much like the old question about nurture vs nature. And the answer depends on the context.

A strategy is a compass to navigate through the business transformation journey from “current state” to the “future state” in organizations today. In the networked society, strategy and execution are more and more intertwined. 

The strategy is not a strategy if it does not take people, leadership, management into account and put it in perspective. The strategy is not a strategy if it’s not dynamic process and action oriented. Strategy is not just that empathetic understanding of people, but the ability to frame it as a compelling story.

The strategy can only be “perfect” for only a moment: Nothing is perfect in this world, and that will include 'strategy.' The moment something changes there is a possibility that the strategy will have to change to adapt. For a "perfect strategy" to exist, everything and everyone would have to remain constant, unchanged including time. That is not the case in today’ dynamic business environment with “VUCA” reality. Strategy rides on probability. A strategy is chosen from possible options and its success is based on the occurrence or nonoccurrence of one or more events. Thus, strategy is both art and science. The strategy is the roadmap to navigate through the business's transformation journey. You always should define your strategy, what the up and down risks are and if realized, what to change, search for a consistent strategy.

Stakeholder involvement and engagement always makes the difficult paths of strategy management easier to tread. Setting good strategic goals or objectives to ensure timely execution for getting the expected results qualitatively and quantitatively. Goals are in most cases, expected to be less specific and/or less time-bounded than objectives. An objective is specific if it is well-defined, unambiguous, and describes exactly what is expected. Either setting goals or managing objectives, it’s important to be stretchy enough to keep people engaged and practical enough to achieve high performance. You can judge the outcome of the good strategy, the people are happy working with a clear purpose and the organization has the competency to improve strategy success because it has more willing people to execute smoothly.

Culture is the framework in which strategy is held for effect benefit and growth: Culture precedes strategy. In as much as both culture and strategy are important to an organization, when strategy management gets stagnant due to culture inertia, it is the right timing to change. A great culture can lift a so-so strategy; a bad culture might sink a good strategy. A great culture can also help to shape strategy, but you have to want to listen, collect feedback based on how people think or act; observe what people are doing when the management is not around, and whether customers are satisfied with their shopping experience with the company. The values forming the foundation of the culture are aligned with the expectations of customers. From a cross-functional perspective, people delight moves the fundamentals of the business model and in the DNA of organization such as corporate culture.

Leaders should believe in the effects and high value of a company culture. Company strategy without integrating company culture is, at best, "using" people, without growing them, that perhaps causes stagnation for the long run. From a management perspective, it means organizations need to not only get the “hard numbers” right but more importantly, how to manage the intangible elements in business from the beginning. Once that culture is established as part of the DNA of the organization, then strategy can be implemented smoothly, the pace of strategy implementation can be accelerated with the quality of output delivered.

Capability coherence is the decisive factor for the success of business strategy implementation: Strategy execution is a capability-based management process. The organization’s capability coherence directly makes an impact on how well organizations can take the step-wise approach to make the cohesive change in a logical way, continual renewal, and build a long-term winning position of the business. An organization needs a set of necessary capabilities at the base level to sustain the business; the organization’s core competency based on the set of differentiated and cohesive capabilities keeps the business staying competitive and becomes a decisive factor for strategy success.

Coherence is simply about logic and consistency. The ability to maintain focus and clarity, even under extreme pressure, is what science calls coherence. Coherence improves business flow. One of the beauties of working with capabilities is that it keeps you from being dragged into all the detail of the processes involved too early, allowing you to prioritize and “keeping the end in mind” - enabling effective strategy implementation. The organization units are the "capability" centers where work gets done, and strategic goals and objectives can be realized. So part of the corporate strategy's role is coordination of the "cascaded" strategic objectives assigned to the units, setting the right timeline, improving capability coherence, and making continuous deliveries to accelerate business performance.

The question about strategy and implementation is very much like the old question about narture vs nurture. And the answer depends on the context. The strategy is a continuous adjustment to the situation. For sure a strategy can be sustainable for a while. But no strategy is sustainable over the long term. A corporate strategy for most businesses must be dynamic in order to support the ever changing business and its needs across whatever time period of change required. The capability based strategy will have a significant high success rate to achieve great business results and build long term business competency.

Posted in: Enterprise Capability,Strategy