Do Strategy Right
I recently wrote a post discussing the concept of strategy with a goal of demystifying the word from something abstract and daunting to something manageable. I cheekily noted that Merriam-Webster tells us simply that strategy is a careful plan. I'd like to simplify this concept of strategy by providing a framework to consider as business and HR leaders look to develop or facilitate a strategy discussion.
While I certainly appreciate the simplicity of the Merriam-Webster definition, it lacks a crucial component, as it should be a careful plan towards achieving a goal. This piece being critical as I have previously emphasized how simply executing a plan or list of to-dos can almost be counter-productive in the long-run, particularly, if the goals lack purpose and are left untied to a greater vision.
So how do we develop a strategy?
Why Does This Matter
First, lets back up. A plan for the sake of a plan is unproductive. When leaders understand how to utilize their strategy to help define their organization's purpose and how the organization fits into the big picture, they can then help the organization pull itself out of the minutia of the day-to-day as well as organizational turf battles. With a strategy, an organization can have alignment on its direction and its priorities, as well as clarity on roles and responsibilities and measures for success. This in turn can help engage employees, drive productivity, and ideally generate a greater likelihood for success.
Tell Me More
Yes, sure, all great in theory, but how does this work?
Strategy comes from the top. Defining the organizational strategy is one of the key functions of leadership, so they must hash out some important elements to help shape the strategy, or else the strategy runs the risk of becoming a hapless plan of busy work.
What are the elements? Let's take a dive into them.
1. Vision - The strategy journey starts with the vision - what are the aspirations for the company, how do those aspirations derive value for its stakeholders, and how do those aspirations manifest in 1, 3, 5 years? This vision should go beyond "we want to double earnings in the next five years," and aim to stir a powerful visual such as "we are the force that drives the economy" Sure, this example is abstract, but it offers something for which the organization can action and work towards. It also invites the organization to reflect and ask - are we that organization, are we doing that today, are we even on the path to get there?
2. Mission - The mission will help define how the organization will achieve its vision and solidify its purpose. To expand on our example, "we are the force that drives the economy" and our mission (to ensure this happens) is to "have the most robust platform to connect companies with talent" to "build partnerships with business and HR leaders to help develop value-add resource solutions," and "to provide valuable opportunities to our talent network, which allows them to grow professionally and personally."
3. Alignment - Of course, if the leadership team is not aligned, the vision, mission, and execution of a strategy are nearly a lost effort. Thus, to help drive alignment, leadership team members must have ownership of the vision and mission. Leaders must be measured against the progress towards the vision and held accountable for the success or failure of the organization's progress.
Once leaders have articulated and aligned on their vision and purpose, they should do what we'll call a "gut" check to develop and implement their strategy effectively. Leaders should invest time to understand what is happening inside and outside the walls of their organization.
4. Environmental Scan - Again, developing a plan is great, but without purpose or tied to a vision, it can be ineffective and unproductive. To work towards a vision effectively, the organization should conduct a scan of what is happening internally and externally. If a company envisions itself as a leading technology company and commits to a plan to high-grade its technology by purchasing new fax machines, they have missed a crucial step of surveying the external environment. If the company proceeds to take the leap to replace all fax machines with mobile applications, yet later realizes their staff can only support fax machine technology, they will have missed the step of conducting an internal scan.
Thus, as companies work to progress towards their vision they should assess the world around them. Some considerations for conducting this assessment can be found in the graphic shown below.
5. Gap Assessment - Once the leadership team has surveyed external and internal conditions, they can then better assess where the organization sits relative to progressing towards its vision - i.e., do they have enough resources, the right skills, the right focus technology to meet their desired goals and how quickly do they need to progress towards the vision (i.e., competition is far ahead or behind).
Alas, with the aforementioned critical elements in place - a sense of direction and understanding of the environment and the organizational needs, a business is set to create the plan or strategy.
6. Roadmap - For the task masters in many of us, it will be very easy to want to leap into action. Before taking that leap or even creating a to-do list, we would encourage leaders to take the time to develop a road map. While conventional thinking could have the plan (step 7) inform the roadmap, we prefer to keep the roadmap as the high-level guide to our destination.
For example, if we consider an actual map, it illustrates for us various cities, landmarks, and roads. It is up for us to decide which of the different routes we want to take to get from point A to point B. To illustrate this example further, lets say we live in Houston, Texas and want to drive to San Francisco, California. Using the map, we can discuss in concept that we want drive from Houston to San Francisco in one week's time, and along the way we want to stop at the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Thus, at this point, we haven't defined which roads will take, which hotels we'll stay, or where we'll get fuel, we have conceptualized our journey (a road trip from Houston to San Francisco), stated our end goal (get to San Francisco with stops along the way), and noted some milestones along the way (visit the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas).
Similarly, business leaders should consider developing conceptual roadmaps. If the vision is aspirational, by when does the organization want to resemble some aspects of the vision - in one year, three years, five years? To our earlier example, if we want to be "the force that drives the economy," when do we start to look like that? If the gap assessment tells us we have significant technology and skill gaps and the competition is far ahead of us, if we are behind today, we likely won't be where we want to be in one year either. This leaves us to answer the tough questions of how long will it take us to get there and where do we start (i.e., on which gap do we place the most focus)? Do we try to tackle everything at once?
To help focus the organization and to ease anxiety, management can leverage this roadmap exercise to demonstrate the rate and pace of change and highlight key milestones along the way - "we know we want to be the leader in our industry and we're not there today, so we're going to make some hefty investments and have these noteworthy accomplishments by year 1, with the goal to reach these milestones by year 3, and to be more like who we want to be by year 7."
7. Plan - With goals in mind, gaps assessed, and a map to guide the journey, management can then fill in the blanks to make this plan achievable. Going back to the Houston to San Francisco example, we can now begin to map out which roads will take, how many miles or hours we want to drive, at which hotels we'll stay. Similarly, with an organizational roadmap, management can build gap closure and growth plans, assign roles and responsibilities, dedicate resources, and lay out timelines to manage progress for the organization's journey.
8. Success Measures - While a good plan is important to success, having measures to demonstrate progress can help ensure the journey is effective, efficient, and sustainable. Again, let's take our road trip example, if we get to San Francisco and the car can't get us back to Houston, someone was injured along the way, or we ran out of money to enjoy recreational activity, our plan wasn't very effective. As such, we should have measures for success such as that we have enough fuel for each leg of the trip, we conduct regular maintenance on the car, we regularly perform safety checks on the vehicle and for all travelers, we spend no more than our daily budget. Of course, with each of these measures, you can further distill those down into performance indicators to manage the progress towards success.
Chances are that if management is undertaking the steps above there will be some changes required of the organization and its employees. As such, I want to stress the importance of managing change.
9. Change Management - This no doubt is a robust topic for another post, but we want to impress that changes in strategy, even a "refresh" of an organizational strategy, will require alignment throughout the organization. This alignment is facilitated through change leaders and agents and communication across a variety of mediums - in groups, one-on-one, online, from management, from peers. Failure to manage change effectively increases the chances of failure in executing the organizational strategy of which much time and energy has been invested.
Bottom Line
Sure, this all started with talk about the simplicity and brilliance of how strategy can simply be defined as "a plan," yet we just went through a lengthy explanation for how to develop a strategy.
Why?
Generally, as you explain these steps to leaders they nod their heads emphatically and respond with "of course!" Yet, as I noted in a prior post, even "successful" companies with well-intentioned management can lack the knowledge, energy, courage, or wherewithal to develop and execute a strategy. Simply, these organizations persist, and management's failure to develop an effective strategy leaves an organization vulnerable to inefficiency, and worse, an untimely demise.
To conclude, I would encourage business and HR leaders to do more than nod as they read through these steps. Take note and then take action. Strategy doesn't have to be hard, but it should be more than words. It should be a plan that guides an organization to the next level.
Do strategy right!
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