Strategy to Execution: Tips to Execute Your Strategy With Excellence.
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The document outlines the importance of strategy execution in organizations, highlighting its definition as a coordinated set of actions aimed at achieving goals through competitive advantage. It emphasizes the need for a data-driven situational analysis and offers best practices for effective execution, including focusing on a small set of goals, using lead measures, and creating accountability routines. Ultimately, it argues that successful strategy execution is essential for organizational success and requires careful integration into daily operations.
Strategy to Execution: Tips to Execute Your Strategy With Excellence.
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- 2. What is Strategy? Building a Strategy Costs of Poor Strategy Execution Successful Transitions 5 Steps Tools Summary Questions Agenda At the end of this presentation you will be better equipped to face the single biggest challenge facing today’s organizations: 1 2 3 4 5 2
- 3. What is Strategy? • There are many definitions, but at the core, strategy is: a coordinated set of actions to accomplish a goal • Designed to leverage your core competencies to gain a competitive advantage over your industry peers Sidney Crosby, Vancouver 2010 Dyson: Innovating mature business categories Clara Hughes: Canadian cyclist & speed skater Canadian Tire Corporation: Evolving Sporting Goods retail leader Steve Jobs & Apple: Redefining consumer electronics (market creation) 3 Lululemon: High quality Yoga clothing that makes you look great!
- 4. A strategy answers three fundamental questions. 4 How will you get there? How will you know that you have arrived? Where do you want to go? • Differentiation • Low Cost • Strategic Alliance • Acquisition • Innovation pipeline • Market creation • What does success look, feel, and smell like? • What metrics will you have achieved? • What will be different? • To have the most accessible retail locations • To be the top 5 in revenues • To deliver the best service
- 5. Strategy is created by building a data driven situational analysis. Situational Analysis Macro Scan (PESTe) Market/ Industry Assessment Customer Research Competitive Intelligence Supplier Evaluation Financial Performance Value Chain Analysis Strategy & Structure Assessment 5 ExternallyFocused InternallyFocused
- 6. Information is turned into insights that inform the creation of strategy. External Summary: Industry assessment, Opportunities & Threats, Key Success Factors (KSF) Internal Summary: Strengths and Weaknesses, Core Competencies Strategic Gap: What capabilities can we leverage to deliver on the KSFs and fill our internal gaps? Developing Strategic Options: Differentiation vs. Cost strategy, ROI of options, option selection Strategic Plan: Vision, Strategic Priorities, Tactics, Objectives, Project Plan & Resources, Risks and Mitigation, Success Measures Situational Analysis 6
- 7. My strategy is complete, now what? 7
- 8. The organizational costs of poor execution are too important to ignore! Why is execution so difficult? • Strategic change is often behavioural • Behavioral change requires people to do things differently • However, people are most often not the reason for poor execution – The real enemy of execution is your day job! (AKA: The Whirlwind) Source: The 4 Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling Wasted Resources Unclear Goals Politics Shifting Priorities Frustration Lack of Company Focus No Accountability Poor Productivity Low commitment to Objectives Little Faith in Leadership 8
- 9. “To achieve a goal you have never achieved before, you must start doing things you have never done before.” – Stephen R. Covey 9
- 10. So how do we improve our chances of successful execution? Get teams to act on Lead measures in order to achieve goals 3 Source: The 4 Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling and Personal Experience 10
- 11. • To build a strategy designed for execution: – Solicit feedback from those who will be doing the work and let them be part of the strategy design process. It will build buy-in and commitment to it. – Create an aspirational vision statement that articulates what the look and feel will be once you have arrived at this new destination – Articulate specific points of differentiation – What will be different from the current state? Paint that picture: what will it look like, smell like, feel like for your customers and your employees? – Create detailed plans on how you will deliver on the points of differentiation – Include financial goals by year. If there are no goals (Rev, Expense, Risk, Customer) how do you know if you are successful? 1 - Redesign the strategy development process: keep it simple! We will a destination for X, Y & Z; based on A, B, & C in order to encourage sports participation and build customer connections in communities. KeyInitiatives $392 $355 $365 $7 $9 $12 $15 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 11
- 12. • The more you try to do, the less you will accomplish: stick to 1-3 goals • Include SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time Sensitive) objectives where possible. It will enable greater understanding and commitment. • Lower level objectives should ‘ladder’ up to the highest level objectives and be tied to a benefit (financial, brand building, customer loyalty, etc) 2 - Clearly define, then focus on a small set of very important goals Be the market share leader Grow top line sales by 3% ($3 million) in the ABC Division Create promotional events in the March to October timeframe to drive $2 million in incremental sales at last year’s profit margin rates. Build a themed promotional event for Fire Safety month (October) that will earn $X. Meet with smoke detector vendors in May/June to get special products and costing to support Fire Safety month. Work with Flyer creative to promote the event. Request Digital and Media teams to create a campaign to support Fire Safety Month. Outcome B Complete for each business unit! Focus on small set (1-3)of very important goals down to the month or weekly level 12
- 13. 3 - Get teams to act on Lead measures in order to achieve goals • Lead measures are more important than Lag measures! Why? – Lag measures have happened in the past and are easier to report on – Lead measures are virtually in your control and will help you to accomplish your goal: you act on these to influence your Lag measures Strategic Objective Lead Measure Lag Measure Increase customer satisfaction Improve account management Customer Satisfaction Score Create innovative products Change product development New product/service revenue Broaden revenue portfolio Add 3 more products this year Revenue growth Examples: How? What are some actions you can take to influence this Lead measure? • Increased calls and scheduled site visits • Learn more about your customer(s) and add value first • Ask users of your products about how products could be improved. Then, work on improving the product to meet this need. 13 Source: The 4 Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling
- 14. 4 - Create and monitor a clearly defined scoreboard • A scoreboard helps you AND your team see how you are doing against your small set of important goals by using your lag and lead measures • There are four guiding principles when it comes to keeping score: •Easy to understand metrics •Use visuals (colors, symbols) that resonate Simplicity •Engaging your team to draw players in •Make it FUN Engagement •Review regularly (weekly) with all team members •Post scoreboard in public Routine •Celebrate success •Support the resolution of challenges Celebrate Status: LineofBusinessInitiatives 3% 19% 55% 6% 17% Red:Willnot beacheived asplanned Yellow:At riskofbeing completed Green:On- track Complete NotStarted BreakdownofInitiativesbyStatus: 61% On-Track &CompleteInitiatives 14
- 15. Focus on small set of goals Act on lead measures to achieve goals Use a scoreboard to view progress Regular and frequent reviews with team Team members set own commitments in front of peers Deliver results/address challenges and celebrate success 5 - Integrate an accountability routine: a virtuous cycle of success! An accountability routine creates an execution culture! Reinforces accountability and encourages performance! 15 Source: The 4 Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling and Personal Experience
- 16. Template Sample – Defining and focusing on a small set of goals • Through this iterative process, you can easily define a core set of actions and tasks that can be managed on a weekly or monthly basis • Notice that these are all lead measures • This process takes time, you must make important trade-offs and prioritize 16 Goals Outcomes Strategies Actions Tasks Be the Market Share Leader Goal 2 Goal 3 Increase revenue by 3% Outcome 2 Create promotional events btwn. June and Oct Action 2 Fire Safety Event (Oct) Meet w/Vendors Flyer Theme Digital & Media Introduce new brand to grow sales Strategy 3
- 17. Summary • Strategy development is ‘sexy’ and what most leaders think they need to focus on. However, strategy must be fine tuned for execution! • Execution is strategy’s unattractive cousin and gets low priority from people if it is not carefully threaded into day to day operations • Supporting a Strategy through its Execution IS A LEADER’s Job! • The following best practices will help you: 1. Redesign your strategy development process 2. Clearly define and then focus on a small set of very important goals 3. Get teams to act on Lead measures in order to achieve goals 4. Create and monitor a clearly defined scoreboard 5. Integrate an accountability routine • Integrating these proven techniques will greatly improve your chances to successfully execute your important strategies! 17
- 19. 19 This SlideShare is based on a LinkedIn Post I wrote. To read it click here. If you like the article, please give it a thumbs up and connect with me.