Strategic Execution - Making Great Leaders

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Strategic Execution

Strategic Execution®

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Strategic ExecutionContents ›


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Contents Changing your perspective helps you to examine

Capability

What is capability?

What strategically valuable assets does your team have at its disposal?

E.g: brands; IP; patents; infrastructure;

Strategic capability

Motivation

Buckets filled with motivation

One-to-ones

Feedback

Best practice examples

Giving developmental feedback

Execution is the key to running a successful business.

Positive change

Why have a vision?

Joel Barker was the first person to popularise the concept

Vision is not a catch phrase.

Personal motivation

Values

Club culture versus company culture

Strategy

Resources

It is important to take a true inventory of the resources

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Strategic Execution®

Contents › Execution is the key to running a successful business.

Execution is the key to running a successful business.

Success in business comes from a blend of vision, planning, action, tenacity and responsiveness to feedback. Truly great leaders develop a deep understanding of the value they are trying to create. It may look effortless is some cases but in reality leaders spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to succeed.

Strategic Execution® is a model designed to help business people examine the constituent parts of a compelling business plan. This model is also a powerful diagnostic tool. Each element is needed and if left out has predictable consequences.

Positive change

Change occurs naturally and it is a constant force in all aspects of our lives. For change to be determined ‘positive’ it must be change that was planned specifically. Positive change is change that is desired, it improves results and delivers more value. Having a vision of the future state of things is only the beginning of the process for creating positive change. Disciplined planning requires that you examine all of the building blocks and execute with each element engaged.

› Open printable assets

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Contents › Vision

Vision

Why have a vision?

Positive Change begins with a vision. We all possess the ability to create pictures in our minds, some of us more so than others, but generally we all talk about what we see in our minds. Vision is a powerful tool that has shaped great civilizations, built industrial leviathans and produced awe-inspiring art. Often these accomplishments come as part of a paradigm shift where a leader has looked at an everyday situation differently. Business innovations that we all recognize and revere have come from a shift in how the leader saw the problem or perceived how value could be created.

Joel Barker was the first person to popularize the concept of paradigm shifts for the corporate world. He began his work in 1975 after spending a year working with visionary thinkers in both North America and Europe. He discovered that the concept of paradigms, models of how we perceive the world around us, could be used to explain revolutionary change in all areas of human endeavor. In 1980, in addition to his work on paradigms, he began to focus on a second crucial component for organizations and individuals: the importance of vision. His work shows that understanding what constrains our thinking, i.e. our paradigm for a given business process or model, can be a catalyst for discovering the future.

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Contents › Vision

The future is the work of leaders – Pathfinders – who are concerned with creating new value within the work they lead. “You can and should shape your own future; because if you don’t someone else surely will.”, Barker warns and furthermore he muses “No one will thank you for taking care of the present if you have neglected the future.”

Managing is trapped in the present while leading is about minding the future so that the change that inevitably must occur is planned and produces more value, making a business stronger and more competitive. In essence minding the future is making sure the business you are in charge of is capable of sustainable value generation.

A vision helps leaders put short-term differences into perspective facilitating how people see their contributions while guiding them through the process of negotiating around seemly conflicting priorities. The vanity on small differences can derail business plans and produce silo mentality, creating turf wars and other such behavior that weakens an organization.

“You can and should shape your own future; because if you don’t someone else surely will.”

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Contents › Vision

As a leader, being able to see the end before you start makes success more likely. Without a clear vision, the people you lead will be confused and feel unconnected to the company; essentially they will be doing a job, picking up a pay-check. This lack of engagement makes organizations slow and unresponsive, incapable of nimble actions, which translates into low productivity and low performance.

When the vision is clear and understood, individuals can determine how they can contributeto its achievement.

The purpose of the strategic business project is to add value to the overall company by enhancing its assets, making it more capable to use its strength to leverage what you have created. No room for sentiment. This is about making money by creating real customer value.

• It begins with asking who is willing to pay and why?

• How does your proposition save customers (internal or external) time and or money?

• Does this proposition have collateral value? Lifestyle – image – community – and are your customers willing to give you a share of this value?

• Can you easily align your vision with your executive team’s vision?

This connection allows them to become more engaged because their results can be linked back to the vision. Performance, effectiveness and innovation are all improved and research shows that engagement has a very positive effect on operating income.

However a vision is not a catch-phase. It is a carefully constructed narrative that tells a story that includes all the elements in the Strategic Execution® model.

The key to building a sustainable business is to begin with that in mind. Every answer you generate for each of these elements must fulfil this one criterion – does your plan help make this a sustainable business.

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Contents › Vision

Once you have these basic questions answered, turn your mind to the classic Porter1 question – what business are you in?

Incredibly simple & extremely powerful – it is important to understand what business you are in so that you can also define what businesses you are not in. Entrepreneurial zeal often confuses this issue. It is easier to build a railway business than it is to build a transport business.

Understanding the forces shaping the competitive landscape is vital to building your credibility as a leader within the management community.

It is also the cornerstone on which to connect to your Company’s vision and mission statements.

As part of the management team in a business you are responsible for the overall ability of the organization to succeed in spite of market conditions.

This understanding also adds integrity and logic to the story behind the changes you believe are important. The more you understand and can translate the Executive teams’ vision the more compelling your vision will be for the people you lead.

What if your manager does not have a vision?

Take action. Engage them in conversations about the future and their aspirations. Help them to provide you with the clarity you need.

1 Michael Eugene Porter is an American academic focused on management and economics. He has made important contributions to strategic management and strategy theory. Porter’s main academic objectives focus on how a firm or a region can build a competitive advantage and develop competitive strategy. Porter’s strategic system consists primarily of: – 5 forces analysis – strategic groups (also called strategic sets) – the value chain – the generic strategies of cost leadership, product differentiation, and focus – the market positioning strategies of variety based, needs based, and access based market positions.

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Contents › Vision

Personal motivation

With these questions answered and the business context preserved it is important to understand your part in all this – what do you want to walk away with? There are multiple perspectives on this question, the two that are most useful are:

• learning and development

• personal reward

From a learning and development perspective, ask what leadership challenge you want to overcome by investing your personal time and energy.

Perhaps you have recently completed a 360° feedback exercise and have data that shows both your strengths and what you find difficult or lacking. Or, you may know from personal reflection or other feedback areas where your leadership style could be further developed.

From the perspective of personal reward, ask ‘what do I want to get out of this project’? Create a list and then prioritize these needs. Be brutally honest, e.g. if you want recognition, don’t be afraid of it – just understand it. This is about your motivation. Personal motivation is critical to sustaining the effort needed to get a strategic project off the ground.

If you don’t seek clarity from your manager, you are doing your team a disservice. If you are unclear then you have opened the door to CONFUSION by definition this means disorientation. What do we mean by disorientation? Befuddlement, befuddling, bemusement, bewilderment, blurring, confounding, demoralization, disarranging, discomfiting, discomfiture, distraction, disturbing, dither, dumbfounding, mystification, obscuring, perplexing, perplexity, perturbation, pother, puzzlement, tangling, tumult, turbulence, turmoil, unsettling, upsetting.

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Contents › Values

Values

Values

What does this business feel like? Describe the environment, the atmosphere in the office.

Values create culture, set boundaries and should drive the recruitment profiles of team members. Know what you value – think about your customers and consider what they would respond to and consider your target audience. Starbucks attracts a type of coffee drinker – Joe’s cafe another. The feel of the business is important on quite a number of fronts.

For example if you value honesty, directness, fun, creativity, learning, and family. The business unit you run should reflect these values, in this example, your office would be a fun place to be; the work spaces might be decorated with creative images;

your team meeting would be filled with honest and frank exchanges; reviews would be conducted on the basis of learning from the past; and family time would be respected and encouraged. Values require definition so that your team can understand what you are trying to achieve. Without values, an organization generates its own culture and often this will feature less desirable characteristics. Changing the culture of a team/ organization is very difficult and sometimes impossible. Therefore if values are not actively managed, the result is described as Corruption.

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Contents › Values

What do we mean by corruption?

Distortion, contagion, corruption, decay, defilement, dirtying, disease, epidemic, filth, foulness, impurity, infection, pestilence, plague, poisoning, pollution, rottenness, spoliation, tainted.

There are two sets of values in any organization: The explicit values – those that we publish, and the implicit values – those that we live.

Club culture versus company culture

When values are not lived inside an organization, we get subtle corruption that seems acceptable until it produces a result that is unacceptable.

Values must be lived; you are under a microscope and your people watch you to see how they should act.

When you compromise on values, people will make decisions outside of the values framework. The problem becomes mission critical when there is an inexorable linkbetween your company’s values and the stated organizational “value-proposition”.

How would Thomson Reuters keep a hold on its competitive position if the integrity of its news stories or data feeds could not be trusted?

Values are a boundary system that can empower people to make decisions, take risks and move the organization at speed.

From a Values framework, culture grows – a creed by which an organization is recognized.

This needs zealot-like attention or disaster can occur, as happened in 2007 at BA and Virgin2, when managers acted outside of industry rules.

2 BA and Virgin managers violated codes of ethics in price fixing – interestingly enough this researcher could not find a reference to values on either company’s’ web site.

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Contents › Strategy

Strategy

Strategy

This could be described as the core purpose of an organization. At ebay™ it is most certainly community; as one analyst described it, e-bay has three main strategies, community, community and community; for Wal-Mart it is low cost to the consumer. Not every organization has this level of clarity to its core strategy. Those that do have an easier time identifying activities that support the core and can communicate with more clarity to the market, their customers and their employees. Chances are you will have to consider a lot of ideas before you find the core strategy for your business unit or current project.

You will also need strategy streams (people, technology, etc.) that support the core strategy. The exercise of finding the core strategy demands that you cycle through Vision, Values and Strategy as you consider strategic possibilities. Strength comes from these elements being developed as inextricably linked, interwoven concepts that are totally sympathetic to each other.

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Once the core strategy or strategies are in place you can begin to identify tactical strategies and plans. You will also realize that in the same way you had to cycle through Vision, Values and Strategy to identify your organizations core purpose, it is necessary and important to do the same with Strategy, Resources and Capabilities.

Eventually the Venn diagram is replaced by a compass – an over arching business strategy that helps guide efforts in order that precious time and money are not wasted. It prevents Diffusion, the loss of energy caused by managers and teams doing work that is not aligned with the organizations core purpose. This loss of energy can be identified as people doing things that are interesting but ultimately will not add value to the businesses vision. A significant part of your leadership role is scrutinizing work that does not make the business more valuable. Your goal is to eliminate diffusion.

When you examine very successful models such as Ryanair or Singapore Airlines for example, you begin to see this sympathetic pattern. Each element seems to support the next and vice-versa. Consider how powerful a recruitment and people development strategy is when its genesis is the vision of the organization.

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What do we mean by diffusion?

Disintegration, dispersal, dispersion, dissemination, dissolution, distribution, emission, extravagance, improvidence, poof, radiation, scattering, spread, vanishing, wastage, waste.

Defining strategy makes thinking about resources much easier.

Turning strategy into action is helped by this simple step model and considering four areas:

1 Imagine the future state – what success looks like

2 Define the high-level core strategies that support the values and will deliver the vision

3 Objectives or goals; measurable milestones dotted along the way to achieving the strategy

4 Tactics, the action plan of how we will achieve the objectives

The vision may be years out, however strategies, objectives and tactics must be set within a specific timeframe that step towards the vision.

PRESENT

FUTURE

KEY GOALS

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N.B. Objectives are best structured when you use a format such as SMART or TIME so key elements are included every time.

T Time Bound

S Specific T A specific date and time

M Measurable I Intelligent - aligned with the Vision, Values and Strategy

A Achievable M Measurable - identifiable sources of feedback

R Realistic E Explicate - clarity express by the manager and the team

SMART TIME


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Contents › Resources

Resources

Resources

Once the core strategic or operational strategies have been decided ask these questions:

• To achieve this strategy what resources will I need?

• Where can I get them?

• Can I get some free resources by collaborating with other departments, suppliers, partners, or other externals?

• What resources do I actually have at the moment?

• What are the vision critical gaps?

Without careful examination of this subject both you and your team will become frustrated with day-to-day problems of delivering a workload and this drudgery pushes the perception of the vision farther away.

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It is important to take a true inventory of the resources at your disposal. Resources are often so familiar that we become blind to new possibilities. One common pattern is that managers lose sight of individual team members’ capabilities/CVs. After a time, managers seem to forget the experience gained by team members before joining their team. To avoid this type of tunnel vision, managers require a paradigm shift so that they can look with fresh eyes at the assets given to them with a view to producing unique competitive value. Another paradigm is the structure of the organization.

Usually managers inherit an organization structure created by someone else often in different times with different needs.

Money, time, people, things and geography are all categories of resource. Careful examination of what is at your disposal can produce new ways to solve old problems and more effective solutions to new or emerging issues.

Ask yourself:

• Why have you been given this specific set of resources structured in this specific form?

• What historical events led to your department being structured the way it is today?

• Has the work changed or have the demands from the customers (internal or external) changed?

• To what extent are new problems causing concern?

This leads to managers focusing on assumed constraints or managing the status quo, for example, a manager inherits a 100-person business unit and, on an unconscious level at least, focuses energy on maintaining the numbers and the structure. In some instances we have found that compensation and pay-grades are tied to head count, which reinforces the idea that structure is a constraint.

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It is also vital to take an internal view, examining your team members from the perspective of strengths, qualities and styles. Where will you find the pockets of creativity in your team, or who is excellent at developing processes, which team members are the interpersonal experts, the relationship builders and communicators. This shift in viewpoint breaks the conventional functional view of people and begins to introduce the idea that individuals have more value than the job they are assigned. Making this shift is critical to developing a high performance team.

Changing your perspective helps you to examine resources with fresh eyes. Looking beyond your team is an important step towards understanding the commercial and competitive pressures your team are facing.

Marcus Buckingham’s research into what great managers do highlighted the successes gained by managers who focused on leveraging the inherent strengths of individuals on their team.

Buckingham makes a case for analyzing people based on strengths and learning styles so that even the coaching is tailored to suit the person. This is a strategy shared by many highly successful Fortune 500 CEO’s, none of whom could be considered ‘soft’ but all of whom report recognizing the importance of getting the best out of people by focusing on the people part of resources.

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Contents › Capability

Capability

Capability

Resource and capability are inextricably linked. Resources are, for the most part tangible: people; IP; patents; infrastructure; locations; and so on, whereas capabilities are evidenced from outputs. You can’t be sure you have developed the capability until you see the results.

Consider capability as the art of combining resources in such a way as to produce a system that produces competitively superior outputs.

Combining resources for competitively superior value and long-term sustainable success.

What is capability?

1 The facility necessary to do something (create unique value that delivers competitive advantages).

2 An aptitude or characteristic that has valuable potential when developed

3 A unique combination of resources with the potential to be used for a particular purpose and deliver specific results (more, better, faster, cheaper, higher margin, accurate, trusted..)

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Contents › Capability

Capability development means combining the right resources and then driving forward with the urgency of a burning platform – we must take this beach-head, the entire enterprise success depends on us taking hold of this position – to place key capability building challenges into business context and then help everyone on your team understand their role in the pursuit of success.

Now map out how these elements are configured. How are they combined and is the configuration optimizing the strengths of each constituent part.

Strategic capability occurs when the configuration makes it possible for a team to create unique value that is rare and highly valued by its customers. Its success is measured by the customer’s increased willingness to pay and your organization’s ability to appropriate increased levels of cash-flow or profits.

The level of success you can achieve and the value you create is directly linked to how you configure your resources to develop capabilities.

Consider core competencies within your team and its wider business network. Understand what your team knows. What skills exist and what specific combinations create unique outputs. What strategically valuable assets does your team have at its disposal? E.g: brands; IP; patents; infrastructure; customer data; statistics – anything rare and valuable. Examine how these are being used.

Next look to core processes. How does work get done, who does what, exactly? Where in the production or transformation process does your team add most value?

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Contents › Motivation

Motivation

Motivation

The key concept when considering motivation is alignment. As a leader your challenge is concerned with connecting the people and the importance of their work to the overall company, effectively aligning their dreams and aspirations with the organization’s goals and values. Critically, you are attempting to move them from thinking that they are doing a job, to thinking they are working for the company doing their job.

If they only relate to the job, they could do it anywhere and will move easily to a new company, but if they are connected emotionally to the company and your department, then this is harder to replace. It has been proven that people who feel this level of connection are more loyal.

This loyalty is translated into more discretionary effort, retention of knowledge, reduced costs and improved service. Research indicates this also results in improved profits over time.

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Contents › Motivation

People generally show up to work motivated and wanting to do a good job. The aim of a good leader is maintain this intention. People are like buckets filled to the brim with motivation. When they come to work the system and managers inadvertently put holes in the bucket and their motivation begins to flow away. Your job as a great manager and leader is to stop putting the holes in the buckets and protect your people from those things that are going to cause motivation to leak out. As a leader you can teach your people how to repair the damage to their motivation.

This prevents Crawl – which is caused when people feel that they are simply trudging through the day rather than completing important work. Or when they feel undervalued or disconnected to the organization they are working for.

Good leaders take time out to have one-to-ones with their team members on a very regular basis. These sessions are characterized by the team member talking more than the manager. As one manager put it, “This is their time to talk about their stuff. It takes time to get them to trust you enough to drive the agenda, but when they do so much falls into place. It makes it much easier to get the best out of everyone on your team.”

“Engagement matters because people matter – they are your only competitive edge. It is people, not machines that will make the difference and drive the business.”

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Contents › Feedback

Feedback

Feedback

What information can you collect that will let you and your team know that they are progressing towards the vision of the organization and the specific goals you have set?

Without properly gathered feedback, most people will begin to doubt whether the work they are doing is working. They will doubt their ability to be successful. They will also be deprived of a mechanism to make vital changes to their work.

You are obligated to identify the feedback required to mitigate any doubt that could slow your team down. It’s important to work through the feedback sources and develop the logic that ties them together and narrates the story of your team’s progress.

Look for best practice examples to help you accomplish this leadership task. For instance when Thomson Reuters set its goal to become the preferred information company, by implication this meant it would become the company that customers would choose over all other competitors. This would require that Thomson Reuters offers a service experience that is more satisfying than any other company competing in it’s market.

It’s an absolute that service quality is inextricably linked to employee engagement. Therefore the senior management at Thomson Reutershas made it their business to measure employee engagement and focus its managers on aligning all team members with the company’s vision.

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It also measures customer loyalty and links these two measurements back to its overall goal.

It is easy to choose the easy way out and claim that it’s very difficult to find the data points that show how your team is progressing, preferring to wait until some time in the future when the evidence would speak for itself. But this approach is prone to doubt and worry. It produces results slowly and discourages discretionary effort.

It’s important to build your own feedback systems. Don’t rely on legacy approaches if they do not give your team exactly what they need to measure their progress.

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Your feedback should be filled with “catching the things done right” as well as the specific changes that will improve their performance. Development feedback should be focused, fair and honest. Weaknesses are not completely negative.

Be careful and avoid situations where behavior is 98% correct and you go straight to discussing the 2% problem. Often a perceived ‘weakness’ is actually a strength being overused. Consider what strengths the individual displays and if they are overusing any of them. Relate performance to values and the vision and not to your personal opinion of what “good” looks like.

Giving developmental feedback

It is also important to consider the individual feedback as this is part of progressing people towards higher levels of performance. However to achieve this outcome the feedback must be developmental.

The key to making feedback developmental is to base in on observations and link it to previously agreed developmental objectives. Once you have identified a development objective with a team member, look for opportunities to observe them working when the behavior in question is evident. Make notes about actual examples you can discuss.

one last note to consider: for a person to perceive that their manager has balanced positive and negative feedback the manager has to give positive feedback 4 times as often as negative feedback.

Strategic Execution - Making Great Leaders

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