Targeting Strategic Harmony

– identifying the symptoms of disharmony and identifying and targeting improvement areas when it seems like the best we have now may not be the best we can do in the future.

Prologue

In any given strategy, there are three high level areas that must be considered for strategic execution and examined for opportunities for improvement: People, processes, and tools.? This is true whether you are running a multi-billion-dollar corporation or digging a ditch.? A ditch could be dug with a large construction machine, like a backhoe and a dump truck to haul the dirt, or... people can scratch at the earth with fingernails and get there – someday.

A company that targets innovation and a desire to improve and evolve, may struggle as all companies do, to define and apply effective improvements on strategic execution.? It is difficult to make determinations on how to target specific weaknesses and concerns that will most effectively address the change that is needed as opposed to a change that is simply “change for the sake of change” or to “shake things up.”? Broad, unspecific, efforts lead to only adding frustration rather than positive, impactful change.

Targeting with specificity requires the uncomfortable look at the symptoms being experienced at the lowest levels and how these symptoms impact effectiveness at delivering strategic performance.? While these symptoms may be evident at all levels of an organization, the most impactful and performance reducing symptoms can be identified at the lowest level of an organization.? Conversely, this means the most valued and worthwhile improvements on a strategic level will often start at this lowest level.? New innovations, new product improvements, and methods and procedure improvements are often identified first at the lowest levels.? They are also often overlooked and ignored at the lowest level longer than is wise, so that potential improvements are delayed or not given appropriate attention until the “pain” of remaining the same is too great.

Below is a list of “symptoms” that can be observed in a person or a team that can assist in identifying some elements of failed strategy.? These have cross-over but may assist to identify the areas of strategic failure which can lead us to determine areas of concern, to target specific improvements.? The table is “turned backwards” to focus on the symptoms first and the strategic area of failure last.

Symptoms

Effects, impacts

Area of strategy failure

1.??? Lack of team cohesion

2.??? Distrust

3.??? Repeating efforts to fix an issue, find a cause, or resolution

4.??? Time spent on the wrong tasks

5.??? Employees cannot name the top five company strategic objectives

·?? Unclear on workflow

·?? mistrust of outcome certainty

·?? Unknown priorities

·?? Unclear roles and responsibilities

·?? Broken focus

·?? Inability to articulate team goals considering strategic purpose

A.? Poor Clarity and communication from top down

1.??? Lack of efficiency

2.??? Unknown or unclear workflow

3.??? Inconsistency of action on responsibilities

4.??? Low focus or poor focus on strategic initiatives

5.??? Perceived bandwidth limitations – struggling to juggle and drive outcomes

·????? Ineffective strategic Impact – Zapier survey: 81% of workers spend less than 3 hours a day on impactful work.

·????? Working outside the focus role – (Zapier) 83% of workers spent 1 to 3 hours a day covering for or making up for the work of a colleague.

·????? Repetitive work – data entry into multiple locations and no single reference point, or moving data between entry points (Zapier:) 76% of workers spend 1-3 hours a day simply moving data between entry points; 73% of workers spend 1-3 hours a day trying to find information or a particular document.

B.????? Ineffective Resource allocation, tools, or defined workflow

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Conversely:

·???????? 45% of workers say that meetings take up an hour a day and 38% spend 2-3 hours a day – meaning only 17% say they spend more time in meetings.

·???????? 69% of workers say they spend less than an hour a day procrastinating, which means it is not so much a person level problem.

1.??? Poor awareness of strategy or purpose

2.??? Focus is directed toward only “to-do lists” without strategic prioritization

3.??? Unconnected roles to the team

4.??? Poor connectedness to workflow imperatives

5.??? Knowledge gaps or their role fit in the workflow and strategy

6.??? Leadership seems remote to the individual, or a team

·????? Efficiency drops by as much as 20% when the value of the contribution is not perceived as purposeful and valuable.

C.????? Workforce disengagement

1. Lack of goal and task execution awareness

2. No tracking capability

3. Inability to identify actionable data and limited analysis

4. No data driven or poor data driven execution

5. Mismanagement of activities due to absence or mishandling of data forcing the use of intuition (guessing) or biased decision focus

6. Negative impacts to Progress and velocity during regular matters.

·????? Employees are “flying blind” or have “broken focus”.

·????? Effort toward a strategic initiative is ignored until the last moment when there is an urgent rush to gain progress.

·????? Strategy is out of sync with evolving circumstances, therefore flawed.

·????? Missed opportunities due to no available data.

D.?? Data Blind spots

1.??? Stagnancy or rigidity of process

2.??? Inability to find or identify improvement opportunities, innovation, or adaptability

3.??? Lacking capacity to meet deadlines or satisfy stakeholder expectations

4.??? Struggling to meet and respond to dynamic market changes

5.??? No process to evolve workflows within the management cycle

6.??? Lack of planning engagement for evolution

7.??? Disconnectedness between purpose and values from the reality of the challenges

·????? Organizational financial performance is not at the optimal level.

·????? The ability to envision that an issue exists limits change.

·????? Results improvements stagnate because workflow does not evolve to rise to next level.

E.? Strategy or planning is rigid

1.??? Unaligned goals

2.??? Failure to update and refine goal expectations

3.??? Department/person execution is disconnected from other departments due to inconsistent workflows.

4.??? Missed or missing action items

·????? Lack of regular collaboration and stakeholder engagement leading to inefficiencies and sub-par financial results compared to more strategically aligned counterparts.

·????? Lack of cohesiveness and discontentment/discomfort between people and teams working separately from one-another when they should be working on the same workflow in harmony.

F.?? Misaligned Goals

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All business workflow is based on:

1.?????? Inputs – the raw data or materials gathered and utilized in the development of something new.

2.?????? Process – what is done with the product input to change its nature and value – to make it worthwhile to next stakeholders.

3.?????? Output – what is delivered to the next stakeholder, creating exponentially more value than the inputs or the processes alone.

When you combine the inputs, processes, and outputs with the people, products, and tools you have a rudimentary idea of the workflow.? Strategically, a workflow must evolve to gain greater value or improve efficiencies in execution which allows higher margins and profitability.

The six strategy failure areas above assist to identify, based on the symptoms listed, the areas where strategy has flaws or failure.?? This is not to say an entire strategy statement is flawed, but to identify specific target points where improvements can be made in Tools, process, or in exceptional cases – people.? The correlation of the areas of failure are the areas where we can improve our successes:

·???????? Better communication and clear strategic vision

·???????? Effective tool and process functions to support resource allocation.

·???????? Workforce engagement in the strategic planning process and the understanding of the value of their role and responsibility in that strategy down to the workflow

·???????? Data availability for analysis and actionable intelligence from a single reliable source

·???????? Strategy that identifies down to the workflow for aligned tactics, and flexible to provide expected results up to the stakeholder’s strategy.

·???????? Cohesive goal focus that are aligned by individual and department to the identified strategy.

Are the workflows employed supporting the individual or department goals as aligned to the strategy?

Are the tools used specific enough to support the workflow and improve efficiency?

Do the tools promote collaboration and flexibility, maintain records of activities and communication to clarify workflow state for a task set? Or are they merely generic at best?

Can you always find the data you want, when you need it, without consulting multiple other people?

Can you identify the steps in a workflow and why the steps exist?? The order of dependency of the tasks? The purpose of a certain task in supporting the company strategy?? Who is responsible for the task? How long it normally takes?

Can these questions even be easily answered? (If not, you may want to rethink your strategic thinking to a different level.)

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