A practical approach to accelerating results
When feeling the pressure to produce results quickly, it is not uncommon to organically proceed with a wide range of activities until something sticks or seems to have a desired impact. While this can be reasonable in a company with significant resources and capacity to experiment, most businesses have to balance effectiveness with efficiency.
Developing a thoughtful strategy need not take significant time and resources and can make all the difference in creating laser focus that will help you to accelerate your ability to accomplish your goals for company success. This is a classic example of going a little slower upfront to go fast. Taking the time to get clear on what your goals are, why they are relevant, and how you will accomplish them sets the stage for engaging those around you in a way that enhances individual buy-in, cross-functional collaboration, and cost-effective approaches to propelling your company to success.
What Constitutes a Powerful Strategy?
In essence, strategy is your plan for achieving specific goals and targets.
I have repeatedly observed managers who start with and focus only on the destination with little attention to constructing a roadmap for getting there. What inevitably occurs is a free-for-all and frenzy of activity resulting in chaos that gets in the way of achieving the intended outcomes. Team members have little clarity on which activities they should prioritize and, being spoiled for choice, will typically gravitate to the activities that they are most comfortable with or enjoy but are not necessarily the most impactful.
The Value of Context Setting
Before jumping into action, taking a moment to provide meaningful context that anchors activities to why the company exists, what the aspirational state will be, and how the employees will coordinate to progress along a prescribed path will increase the likelihood of achieving these goals more efficiently.
The five components of the Purpose-Driven Strategic Framework (Figure 1) set the stage for (i) defining specific actions your company will prioritize above all others to maximize success and (ii) appeal to what motivates the diverse individuals you need to sustainably engage to execute the strategy.
Actualizing Strategy
With this context in mind, I like to think of strategy as being comprised of at least three digestible bites:
- Design. Determining how the company will remain relevant and sustainable into the future.
- Planning. Identifying what must be true to enable the company to successfully execute the strategy. This involves identifying critical success factors like bricks and mortar needs, technology requirements, workforce skills and abilities, and specific market relationships. Furthermore, defining the sequence and timing for these activities creates clear expectations for others.
- Execution. Taking action to close gaps between “what is” and what was identified in the Planning phase. Readiness preparation and execution go hand-in-hand to define the type of calculated action that ensures successful accomplishment of the strategic objectives.
Why Is Strategy Important?
If the absence of a strategy invites confusion and inefficiency, a strong strategy can galvanize teams by providing clarity on the goals and what actions should be prioritized so that individuals and departments are rowing in the same direction.
Rather than prioritizing pet projects and activities that feel comfortable, strategy creates a blueprint that enables individuals to more objectively identify what will accelerate progress towards achieving the goals that will support the company in realizing its vision and honoring its mission.
Common Barriers to Strategy Development
The concept of strategy can be abstract and uncomfortable for the action-oriented executive. For those executives with an aptitude for strategy, taking a moment to document and communicate their intentions and plans will activate others to help carry the load.
A lack of comfort, patience, or experience with how to move through the different phases of strategy development can pose significant impediments to harnessing the full potential of a well-crafted strategy:
- Not fully understanding how strategy supports execution
For reasons described earlier, strategy helps create a sense of order that empowers companies to take ownership of what they can control while knowing when and how to influence factors which they do not directly control. Sharing the strategy with others may take some time but ultimately will accelerate the ability of the company to achieve desired outcomes. - A perception that it will take too much time
Strategy need not be ponderous or cumbersome, but it should be somewhat calculated and reasonably tested. While it is true that there is a time requirement involved, with focused attention, strategic planning can move efficiently with skilled facilitation and experts who can assist with gathering and synthesizing data into meaningful knowledge to inform a thoughtful strategy. Also, business can and should continue to operate as appropriate while the new strategy is being formulated. (The primary caveat is considering deferring major investments or watershed decisions until the prevailing strategy begins to come into focus.)
In addition, some CEOs have a strong background and skillset in strategy so the path forward may be so clear to them that they move quickly through the strategic design and planning phases on their own. Unfortunately, they move so far out in front of the rest of the team they will rely on to get the work done that the plan ends up muddled and poorly executed. Taking the time to socialize the strategy with the appropriate parties will be critical to successful implementation. - Feeling overwhelmed by how to construct a strategic plan
Strategy involves specific skills, knowledge, and experience that not everyone possesses. Examples include a talent for complex (and sometimes contentious) group facilitation, the aptitude for synthesizing seemingly disparate opinions and data points to identify common patterns and core themes, and the ability to apply systems thinking to anticipate and highlight important considerations that strengthen strategic plans.
Some companies have their own strategy executive(s) with these skills, who can help shepherd leaders through strategic planning and/or engage additional external support as needed. For those without these internal resources, there are experts out there who have an aptitude for facilitating the moving parts of strategy design, planning, and execution. When seeking this expertise, consider what would complement your native talent best: Do you need a neutral, third-party facilitator or can you or someone within your organization serve in that capacity? Do you need help with preparation and execution or are you just seeking help with strategy design? Do you need an industry subject matter expert or can you supply that knowledge to support a seasoned consultant?
How to Get Started with Strategy Development
Although it would be ideal to create strategy in a predictable, linear sequential manner, this may not always be practical.
While I am not necessarily promoting an “a la carte” approach to strategy, I recognize that a semi-structured approach to connecting strategy with results is better than no approach at all. Here are some quick tips to “build the plane while it’s in flight”. Please keep in mind that each of the following, pursued separately in isolation, may pose their own risks.
- Ground Yourself Quickly. Chances are your company already has mission and vision statements. If so, quickly review and make sure they are still relevant to what you believe needs to happen for the company to be successful. If they are still relevant, highlight them when sharing the goals of the company with relevant parties. If not, identify a working draft set to get started and agree to refine over time. This latter approach is not ideal but, under some circumstances, may be difficult to avoid. In that instance, it becomes ever more critical for building a high performing, purpose-driven company culture that you make sure to go back to crystallize your mission and vision statements for your workforce at the earliest opportunity.
- Sequence Near vs. Long-Term Wins. Since time is often of the essence, identifying near-term wins to accomplish the priorities of senior leaders and decision-makers (e.g., CEOs and/or investors) will help prove the value of a strategic approach and mitigate the misperception of strategy being ethereal and cumbersome. These near-term, tangible wins help buy credibility and space to develop and implement longer-term, accretive plans.
- Prioritize & Organize the Critical Few. Developing a comprehensive view of a highly complex problem or environment may not be achievable all at once so sometimes there may be benefit in narrowing the focus. Quickly complete your research to make the most informed decisions you can on what actions intuitively make the most sense to enable your company to live to fight another day. Short-term survival can buy the time you need to revisit longer term company strategic needs in greater depth.
- Triage & Keep Track of Placeholder Ideas. There will inevitably be ideas worth further evaluation that cannot be tackled in the moment. In addition to keeping track of these, take a moment to describe what circumstances will trigger going back to them for further consideration at a future date.
Conclusion
While not a magic bullet for success by itself, strategy plays a crucial role in connecting individuals and teams to the mission and vision so that all feel fully invested in the success of the company.
Coupled with the other 3 EverSparq core components for cultivating a purpose-driven culture (Implementation, People & Organizational Performance, and Sustainable Transformation), this distributed network of talent will work more effectively and collaboratively with one another reducing avoidable conflict, confusion, and wasted time and effort that creates drag on company performance.
Thinking of strategy like building a new house is an easy way to see the value and power of having a plan upfront to inform and prioritize activities that will maximize the likelihood of accomplishing the goals that will have the greatest impact on your company’s success.
With a thoughtful facilitated approach involving knowledgeable strategy experts, creating this valuable blueprint will propel your company towards success faster.
For questions or to find out how EverSparq can help you design and implement any of the tools or practices described in this article to fit your company needs, please contact info@eversparq.com.
