Initiatives

To operate a highly responsive organization, besides crafting a good strategy, the management needs to make fact-based “smart actions” in a consistent way.

Strategy is oriented to the future and execution is oriented to the present. Some more important questions to ask the leadership team during strategy development are which core values you need to promote to propel the organization forward in line with the strategic ambitions. Are they different from today and if so what needs to change? What are the common beliefs and unspoken rules that everybody in the company knows and shares, is organizational culture a catalyst or hidden glue that gets the business stuck? How does it drive organizational behaviors to expedite change and accelerate strategy implementation?

Build a solid roadmap to drive implementation: Statistically, strategy execution has a very low success rate due to rapid change and uncontrollable variables. Thus, business management has to and express that in strategic objectives, set the right priority and analyze potential pitfalls. Otherwise, the emergent strategies will continue to be ignored, the business gets stuck with the routine task of the day and nobody is adequately prepared to function well in this reactive mode.

Sometimes strategy makers spend more time designing the content of strategies than thinking about how to implement them successfully. Also, ineffective “hands-on” means management is interfering, undermining their people and inhibiting the fluid decision-making processes. Even worse, it could mean a clear vision or the real strategy is lost to the detriments. Ineffective “hands-on” implies micromanagement syndrome. The successful strategy needs good communication transmission. That will create a sense of ownership, as well as the strong business capabilities for effective strategy implementation.

Initiate strategic alignment and synchronization: Organizational leaders have to keep their eyes on the higher horizons, focus on what matters the most, identify what generates the most value for the company, align key success factors of the business, in order to achieve strategy execution excellence. Strategic alignment occurs on multiple levels, but it presupposes the ability of each link to articulate their strategic intent. Where there is alignment, then autonomous action ought to be possible while still aligning with clear vision. Strategic synchronization can catalyze the flow of the right information to the right people timely to coordinate and execute strategy, tactics, and manage risks effectively.

Business management accountability across the organizational hierarchy is crucial to enable strategy execution. The middle management is held responsible for department results by top management and to succeed, they need to distribute responsibility between employees, and hold each other accountable to achieve common goals smoothly. Business management glues up different business factors for accelerating team/organizational performance, defining & solving problems effectively, and pursuing either strategic or tactical business goals dedicatedly.

Only initiatives that support the achievement of prioritized objectives should be implemented, strike the right balance of quick win and long term business advantage: Environmental change is part of the new normal. If organizations are agile, with information fluidity, process coherence, learning plasticity, they are able to adjust priority in response to the environment, in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. Changing is a lot easier, and they waste less time, energy and money on doing things that no longer have strategic relevance.

You should estimate the time and cost for all the project activities that you can think of and include a consideration of the interconnections. Analyze total cost, total value, and total impact Return on Investment should be expanded into the broader perspective which usually cannot be measured fully in time and dollars such as employee satisfaction, creativity, teamwork or culture evolution, etc, with multi-layer ROI.

To operate a highly responsive organization, besides crafting a good strategy, the management needs to make fact-based “smart actions” in a consistent way. The purpose of setting collaboration principles is to harness cross-functional interaction, communication, and collaboration. This includes the ability to support all sorts of collaboration activities, etc in order to produce high performance results coherently.

Posted in: Execution,IT Strategy/Roadmap,Strategy