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Keeping your company’s strategy fit and thin is essential in strategic business planning.  If your company could put on some track clothes and step on a scale, would it look fit and healthy, or frail and flabby? If a company has been taking care of itself it shows with healthy bones and muscles. If not- well, it’s always a great time to hit the GYM.

Healthy Bones Your company’s strategic plan is more than just some business tool- it’s the skeleton of your organization. Just like your bones give you structure, you plan keeps everything attached at the right places and moving in unison. Imagine if you were missing any one of your bones (or all of them) – you’d be a mess!

If the members of your organization don’t have a great plan structuring their activities, then you may have mis-alignment of priorities. A foot attached to a chin here, an arm sticking out of your forehead- you get the picture. Anyone who wants to be able to get their organization moving in unison with strong supports needs to spend time planning.

Strong Muscles Sure, you need your structure, but your muscles actually get you places. Think of the muscles of your organization as your action plan- execution of your strategic plan actually moves your company forward towards your goals.

So how can you give your company a work out? If you have a great strategy giving your processes and priorities structure, then the simple answer is do what the plan says. A large percentage of companies who take the time to make sure they have a plan in place never actually use it- that’s like taking a bunch of calcium to strengthen your bones and then sitting on the couch with a bag of chips instead of hitting the weights.

If you want to work out, you need to manage performance. Don’t just set goals, make sure that you follow up regularly with status meetings and performance reviews. A good rule of thumb would be look at your status (your company’s scorecard) at least monthly- otherwise you may start building a gut! At least quarterly, management should also review your plan and objectives. Think of your managers as personal trainers for your company.

It may feel awkward getting back in the gym, but give it time. Fitness is as important to your company as it is for your own body.

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The need for change is often inherent in a strategic plan, and this can shift the power dynamics in any organization as it represents a re-prioritization of resources and activity.  With this acknowledged, it is a clear role of leadership, and leadership alone, that must embrace the process, implementation and execution of new strategic actions.  Leadership is tasked with viewing strategy execution as their job. Having a keen understanding of the process of change is vital.

Comprehensive communication about the effectiveness of the purpose of a strategic plan is often a big initial hurdle.  Often strategic goals are viewed as an extra expense that raises costs.  To gain acceptance of new directions based on strategic thinking, the actions of any given plan need to be viewed as solutions to challenges or problems that exist or are likely to exist in the near future.  Cost-benefit analysis and cause and effect comparisons to prod strategic action are also effective ways to bring people on board.

Once key leaders see that the strategic plan is not only additive but also vital to future viability, their position should shift if they have the organization’s best interest in mind.  At this point, building alignment for cross-functionality and even organizational structure shifts can be viewed as solid maneuvers that are based on necessity and not a whim.

At an everyday level, leaders must embrace the strategic change in their approach to work.  For example, if a strategic plan calls for less standardization to create an environment for the development of innovations, then leaders must abide by that playbook.  On the other end of the spectrum, if increased efficiencies are part of a strategic goal, then leaders would have to also abide by and enforce increased standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Overall, this process is not easy. Don’t assume robust, passionate discussions are a rejection of the developments you seek.  Instead, try to inject the values that your organization keeps into the process.  These values should help you anchor the discussions against the tides of tangents and emotions, while keeping the dialogue progressive with the organization’s success and longevity in mind.

Strategy Check:  Are your leaders onboard to fundamentally embrace the strategic plan?

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Starting at the team member level, key staff should update the weekly actions they are responsible for.  Department leaders should then organize a monthly meeting with all key staff to review department-owned goals and performance metrics. This is also the time to brainstorm, discuss and take action on tactical or operational issues that might be clogging progress.

At the department level, a collective meeting each month is required for the senior management team to report on department-owned goals and performance measurements, with an emphasis on what your organization’s key performance indicators are telling you.  This is where goal status and realized performance have an opportunity to be analyzed and learned from. As a result, recognition for achievements and cooperation can be deemed appropriate or the need for corrective actions can come to light.  

Then gather your entire leadership team for an intensive review of the top, pre-defined strategic issues quarterly. These two questions will help you determine the context of the issue:  1) Is the issue a technical problem in implementing the operational structure?  (i.e. Are the reports not working out? Is the scheduling not conducive to department workflows?)   2) Are there problems with incentive alignment or the culture? (And if so, how can you best address the expectations for change to be managed?)

For any of these meetings, be it at the team member review or the senior management session, you should standardize the preparation needed and the report structure. For many organizations, this represents a significant time drain if not appropriately planned.  Nip this in the bud and come up with a format that clearly communicates goal/action, and performance measurement.  Focus on the tasks at hand, clearly and effectively, and you’ll find yourself moving toward the broad improvement themes contained within your Strategic Plan.

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The facilitations are over, the goals created and the reporting schedule established.  Even with all these elements in place, you would be wise to further specify what it will take for successful cross-functional execution. Creating this alignment is a key necessity for executing a strategic plan between business units that have shared goals or objectives.

By the very nature of being strategic, plan objectives and goals are largely interlaced between business units.  It is important to identify what kind of coordination needs to exist in order to achieve assigned actions and ultimately the common goal.    It is also important to recognize the level of training or education that may be needed in order to best perform throughout the requirement.  Finally, understanding the strategic Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) will help ensure your work progresses across departmental lines.  Let’s expand these thoughts.

What Does the Goal Require?

Determine if the task actions are pooled in one department, sequential across departments, or if department coordination by a series of reciprocal adjustments is necessary.  For example, pooled tasking simply requires the adherence to SOPs set by the organization.  For sequential tasks, it becomes more important to manage transactions and lateral transitions of work.  Finally reciprocal adjustments require a high level of coordination and information sharing… as the name implies all members of this goal network are affected by and can affect the tasks of another.[1]

Do the Actions Require Additional Training or Education?

Identified by either the business unit or the organization at large, this is an overlooked element… and contributes to a fear of failure and feelings of inadequacy that management would oft not like to highlight.   Those big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs) [2]  need reality checks, and one proper means of keeping these projects in line is supplying training and education where needed.  Otherwise you run the risk of having staff avoid acceptance of any new responsibilities and accountability becomes a doomed burden.

What SOPs Must Be Followed?

Define the expectations surrounding the decisions and actions that require coordination or affect the actions of another department or unit.   Bring this in step with identified implementation management processes to stay healthy.  Ignoring or marginalizing your organizational structure demands will eventually take your strategic plan into a Code Blue situation.

In closing, remember to focus on what the goal demands of your organization and methodically determine how to rise to the challenge.  There are many different organizational structures out there.  Part of your strategic job is to open doorways between the silos you may encounter…. and then keep them open throughout the execution of the plan.

[1] Types of Interdependence, Table 5.1:  Lawrence Hrebiniak, Making Strategy Work, Warton School Publishing, 2005.

[2] James Collins and Jerry Porras, Building Your Company’s Vision, 1996

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Revelations by management made in the article make you wonder if execution strategies found a way into any of the strategic plans at hand. Some include: the need for monthly instead of quarterly reviews; the need to review a strategic plan to see if it is “as relevant as it was three-years ago”; and a “switch from distant calendars and rigid forecasts of the past.”

The only thing that should be rigid in a strategic plan is an organizational commitment to properly execute it. This includes monthly executive reviews that are fed by weekly staff updates. If problems in the action elements of the plan arise, this prompts corrective adjustment each month.

If something within a plan can’t be executed, the plan needs to be adjusted… and it can’t take three years to have this happen. Regular, cyclical communications from the staff to the managers to the executives are essential. Routine assessments for internal and external feed into this process as well. These can’t be implemented when crisis calls, these need to find their place during the writing of the plan itself.

In this way execution is tied into planning, much like a journey is guided by a compass. Make no mistake; this is a time investment, and one that requires an organizational structure with its influences in check. In fact the “Inability to manage change effectively or to overcome internal resistance to change” is cited as the #1 Obstacle to Strategy Execution in Warton Business School professor Lawrence Hrebiniak’s Making Strategy Work (2005).

Proper strategy execution keeps a plan adaptive. Contrary to what the WSJ article states, being adaptive is not a new approach. It’s just a necessary one that seems to get overlooked or underestimated once strategic plans find final approvals, yet no good plan is so final that it is fireproof to changes inherent around us all.

STRATEGY CHECK:  Is your strategy execution process lined up that will keep your plan current and aligned for your organization?

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Editor’s Note: Our last strategy check included this quote, which generated so much positive feedback, we decided to dedicate a whole newsletter to it.

Processes when performed correctly create a rhythmic routine, and for very large organizations having everyone march to the same beat is a real accomplishment… except when the very road you walk on goes from a cobblestone path to a jet-way tarmac.

In a recent talk, the Boy Scouts of America’s VP of Operations Gary Butler highlighted how easy it is to mistake action for outcomes and in doing so he illustrated Churchill’s point in a real word example. For over 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America has been perfecting the processes that deliver programs and services to youth worldwide. An overall unintended outcome, however, has been a decline in membership levels. “We did not connect processes to the results, in fact, we valued process over results.” Butler states.

Intensive reviews by this stalwart organization have initiated a fundamental shift in the way BSA sets its strategic direction and processes to solve the issues that have been eroding its membership base. They have created key performance measurements to be monitored in the pursuit of membership retention and growth now fall within six key departments: Marketing, Governance, Programs and Services, Financing, Talent Management (Volunteers), and Administrative Services. Sourcing data reports from these areas, new processes have been designed to be simple to duplicate and repeat, but most importantly flexible to react to each Councils’ real opportunities or threats – and emphasizing what instead of the how.

Old Emphasis – “The How” Fully-engaged Boards Strategic Implementation Fiscally-Sound Councils

New Emphasis – “The What” Fully-Trained Boards Creating a Strategic Plan Fundraising Campaigns

Soon real-time information on the market (inputs) and performance measures (outputs) will be integrated into the “New” BSA strategic management tools. All functional areas and geographic locations will be able to drive their results, from the national to troop level. All the while, the overall goal stays embedded and crystal clear: Grow Membership and Impact Youth’s Lives.

As such, make the mission of the Boy Scouts of America, “To prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law” viable for the next 100 years.

Not to be underestimated, this organizational change is an uphill battle, requiring well-entrenched mindsets to be shifted and re-focused. As the BSA is one of our client’s, we’ll be bringing you periodic updates as this massive change begins to transform an American icon.

STRATEGY CHECK: Take a peek at your 2010 strategy to ensure the outcomes you are seeking are clear and focused on intentional, purposeful results.

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It’s like the scene from the bad dreams you had as a kid; the ones where you show up to take your final exam and don’t remember a thing. You’re at a business function explaining what your company does and someone asks what your strategy is, and you have no answer. You should have one. You want to have one. But nothing comes to mind. While choosing a strategy isn’t impossible, it is a word that’s often misunderstood.

What is strategy?

Your strategic plan will contain many things, including your mission, vision, principles, objectives and tactics, but none of them are your strategy. Your strategy, simply, is the way in which you plan on matching what you do best with the customers you plan to reach.

Your strategy should:

• Establish unique value proposition compared to your competitors
• Be executed through operations that provide different and tailored value to customers
• Identify clear tradeoffs and clarifies what not to do
• Focus on activities that fit together and reinforce each other
• Drive continual improvement within the organization and moves it toward its vision

What isn’t your Strategy?

Knowing what strategy is can also be explained by looking at what strategy is not. Dr. Michael Porter, the leading strategy guru and professor at Harvard, had this to say at the 2006 World Business Forum in Chicago. Strategy is not

• Best practice improvement
• Execution
• Aspirations
• A vision
• Learning
• Agility
• Flexibility
• Innovation
• The Internet (or any technology)
• Downsizing
• Restructuring
• Mergers/Consolidation
• Alliances/Partnering
• Outsourcing

So Which is Yours? A Broad View:

In the 1980 classic Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors, Michael Porter simplifies the scheme by reducing it down to the three best strategies. They are cost leadership, differentiation, and market segmentation (or focus).

Cost Leadership Strategy

Organizations that choose this route aim to produce a product or service that matches a given level of quality, at a lower cost than their competitors. They then either sell their product or service at a normative cost in order to maximize revenue or they sell at a lower cost in order to gain market share. The key to this strategy is efficiency.

If your organization’s strengths include operational excellence, or efficient distribution channels, or any other attribute that allows for cost savings in production, this strategy is an option.

The risk with this strategy is that eventually other companies will also be able to produce at a lower cost, due to the efficiencies brought about by advances in technology.

Differentiation Strategy

Businesses that choose this strategy have a unique quality to their product that customers see as better or at least different from the other options available in that market. This uniqueness gives the producer the chance to sell at a premium price.

If your organization’s core competencies grant you greater skill or creativity in production, and your sales and marketing effectively communicate the advantages of your product or service over your competitors, this may be a good choice.

Focus Strategy

This strategy is also called a segmentation strategy because it involves carving your market in order to focus on a smaller group in which you can implement either a cost leadership or differentiation strategy. One benefit of using a focus strategy is that businesses can build loyalty in their given segment.

While businesses that choose to focus on one smaller segment of an industry may not have the leverage with suppliers that other organizations may, they generally have more intimate knowledge of their target customers and are able to tailor their products or services to them, and therefore charge greater prices or enjoy greater loyalty.

What to do

While your over-arching statements like mission, vision and principles give your long-term direction, there still needs to be something that lives in between those statements and the decisions you make to bring them into fruition. Choosing a strategy means that your company and the employees within have a solid answer for not only where you’re going, but how you’ll get there. With an obvious strategy, you have the structure needed to decide between different objectives and tactics that make up your action plan, and lead your organization to victory.

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What can we learn from his dramatic recovery, and how solidly Apple has turned out successes through four different industries (Music, Movies, Cell Phones and Computing)?

A Dramatic Turn-Around that Speaks to Today’s Climate

For businesses who are currently navigating the global economic crisis, an example like Apple’s last decade of performance offers not only inspiration and hope, but great insight for cash-strapped organizations hoping to not only hold on but eventually thrive. In 2000, Apple was worth only $5 Billion and facing possible bankruptcy. Coming into 2010 they’re worth $170 billion, produce the leading mp3 player, the most popular mobile phone and have transformed all of the industries in which they do business. So, what did Jobs do when he took back the helm?

Steve’s Three Things: How Focusing on the Basics Gave Apple their Foundation

Humility

When Jobs came back on board at Apple, the company was not poised to launch the huge successes that have become so iconic to their brand in the last decade, like the iPod. The company was facing possible bankruptcy and had lost consumer confidence. Steve Jobs shocked many when he decided to turn to competitor Microsoft for help.

Such a move, especially for a personality not known for humility, what a bold move, but displayed Jobs’ fierce dedication to his company’s success, over his image. As leaders, owners and managers, our humility can greatly impact and inspire our organizations.

Simplicity

Next, Jobs dramatically paired down Apple’s product line from a broader range, to just four different computers. Doing this allowed the company to focus on creating four excellent tools for home and business, and also saved the company money by eliminating projects that didn’t contribute to the new vision Jobs had brought when he took back control. With this new focus, Apple created the iMac: an all-in-one solution that generating sales for future investments.

Is your organization possibly wasting resources on projects or initiatives that aren’t in line with achieving your vision? Are there areas in which you could re-align resources towards sources that will better help you reach your goals?

People

As soon as Jobs came back on board, he assembled a stellar management team- many of whom had worked with him at his previous company. As a testament to the quality and fit of this brain-trust, nearly all of them have stayed on board throughout this decade of achievement.

Having the right people in place within your organization is one of the most powerful elements to executing your corporate strategy. When talented, committed personnel are given the authority and ownership to guide initiatives toward success, you can take a great deal of chance out of whether your strategy will succeed.

One More Thing

As driven as Steve Jobs is toward success, and as wealthy as he has become as a result, you may be surprised to learn that his motivations aren’t to make a ton of money. As told by some of his closest comrades, instead of being inspired by monetary success, Jobs is driven by his intense, abiding and passionate love for his company.

Those close to him can truly trust that he would to anything to see Apple succeed, and as those who have weathered the ups and downs and surprises brought by running a business know, sometimes that’s what pulls the company through.

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The BSA has in the past done what many non-profit organizations have done and that is just follow the same steps in creating their strategic plan each year, focusing on the areas that are of most interest to them and checking a box that it is complete.  What they weren’t doing was taking an objective look at the national or council level to determine where they should really be focusing their attention.  With our assistance, they have developed a Business Report Card survey, based on the Balanced Scorecard from Harvard, for their key stakeholders and volunteers to take.  This survey is designed to give each council a more comprehensive view of where their strengths and weaknesses are, so they can see what areas they really need to focus their attention on to achieve success.  As Howard Olsen, of M3 Planning, said, “It is a health check for the councils.”

One of the areas that everyone on the call was in agreement on was that the BSA needed to get more buy-in from the volunteers if they were going to move forward and face the challenges of the next 100 years.  With the use of MyCouncilPlan, created by M3 Planning, each council will be able to create a strategic plan with cascading goals that show each volunteer how their small part contributes to the overall success of the council.  As an online tool, MyCouncilPlan will allow volunteers the ability to follow the progress of the plan at any time without having to contact the council office as well as force accountability as it sends reminders to each person about their responsibilities and requires them to update their progress on a regular basis.

As Gary Butler, BSA Assistant Chief Executive / Council Operations said at the end of the call, “It is an exciting time for the Boy Scouts of America.”

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