How to improve the design and execution of strategy
Understanding "Cause and Effect" - avoiding
corporate lethargy
Back to strategy
diseases
Likely symptoms of problems
Soon after execution the strategy grinds to a halt. The management
team get frustrated “It’s not happening”. The
staff are frustrated “Its words without action”.
Preliminary diagnosis
Strategic plans can concentrate on analysis (the situation) and
what will be achieved (intended results). There may be little
that explains how it will be delivered. Typically, "we shall
achieve this turnover/cost saving etc in this vibrant market"
without a clear explanation of how. This means that the emphasis
turns to results, rather than helping people understand how they
contribute to the strategy.
The strategy may be thought through fully, but that thinking
is not communicated. Cause and effect is not explained. So people
are left asking: What really drives performance? What are the
few critical levers of change? What is needed to “know well”
and “do well” to deliver?
Case study
An international financial services company wished to dramatically
change to a more profitable customer segment. This required
a significant change to the: type of services it would deliver,
the way it delivered its services, the underlying organisational
capabilities it needed to develop.
We worked with the management team to explore what they wanted
to achieve, how they would get there and the underlying capabilities
they would need to build. We also validated the financial
implications of the strategy to ensure that there were consistent
with the strategy and the actions would lead to their achievement.
This was brought together so there was explicit consensus within
the management team that this was how the strategy would be developed.
This strategy map was used to create and details the change programme,
establish the detailed objectives, measures and targets, and to
communicate the strategy to the whole organisation. The
strategy map, with the cause and effect model, was used to explain
the strategy to the whole organisation, stage by stage.
Thus way they were able to buy into the thinking behind the strategy
as well as targets they had to achieve.
Underlying solutions
We use strategy mapping to develop this cause and effect model.
Our interview process pulls out what really matters to the executive
team to enable us to develop an overall model. We bring together
the drivers of performance and the, often contradictory, trade-offs
inherent in the strategy.
From this we create a singe page map of what drives performance
and how the strategy will be executed. Achieving executive consensus
as well as creating a tool to communicate the strategy and measure
progress.
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