What Every Strategy Manager Needs to Know

It’s a great time to be a strategy manager in your organisation! The executive team has been working on the strategy for months and they have finally announced it to all staff. 

Now you have to implement it.

It is well-understood in the strategy world that strategies fail because of poor execution rather than poor formulation. So what does a strategy execution manager need to know to avoid failure? Here are some questions that might want to ask yourself in your role.

What is my role?

Kaplan and Norton describe the role of what they call the “Office of Strategy Management (OSM)” as architect, process owner and integrator. The architect applies strategy frameworks in an organisation’s overall management system, the process owner is responsible for specific strategy execution processes, and the integrator links to other management activities. Each organisation assigns different accountabilities to suit its individual way of working, especially for integration activities. A strategy manager needs to be clear about their own accountabilities and the accountabilities of others who own related processes.

Is success clearly defined?

Do you know, at a practical level, what success looks like? Many strategy maps and strategy plans describe success using high level concepts, jargon, or waffle words. Phrases like “empowered staff” or “fit for purpose systems” might look fine in a strategy map, but they are not clearly defined enough to be useful when it comes to prioritising initiatives and measuring progress.

Even if the strategy map has been designed in line with best practice, and success is defined in tangible terms, it still may be open to interpretation. The strategy manager often has the best understanding of the background to the strategy, and can work with objective owners to ensure that staff have a clear understanding of what success looks like in terms that they can relate to.

What are the trade-offs?

Strategy is often described as a set of integrated choices that position an organisation to achieve its long term goals. Strategy execution is also a set of choices, about the means to achieve those goals. Deciding which initiatives to prioritise and the sequencing of projects requires understand trade-offs between competing demands. 

To point out the obvious, the initiatives that contribute the most to organisational success are the ones that should be prioritised. However, it is often not that easy to work out the best approach. Is success defined clearly enough so that business cases can show how much a project can contribute to strategic goals? Does doing one project prevent the possibility of doing others because they dominate a key person or resource? Do all strategic objectives deserve equal attention, or are some more important than others? The strategy map may not be clear about an implied hierarchy amongst strategic objectives.

What is the capacity for change?

Strategy is a system for change, and it will fail if the organisation becomes overwhelmed. A good strategy manager understands which parts of an organisation are going to be put under the most pressure by needing to do additional work over and above current work. Managing bottlenecks, creating a steady cadence of change, and empowering those affected by the change are methods that can be used to limit the amount of pressure that is experienced without compromising engagement and operations.

What are the boundaries?

Every organisation has a system of decision-making rights, whether explicit or implicit, and whether formalised or informal. In situations where the rights for strategic decisions are not clearly stated, the strategy manager plays a key role in determining how decisions can be made in a timely and informed manner.  A strategy manager needs to have a good grasp of the organisational culture, key influencers, and the strategic intent.

What are the gaps in the strategy?

There is nothing wrong with gaps in the strategy. In fact. a strategy should never be 100% complete. It is far better to have a 70% satisfactory strategy and get on with implementing it well, than to have a perfect strategy and deliver it poorly or not at all.

The gaps might be areas that are poorly defined, speculative, based on unspoken assumptions, or even missing entirely. They might be risks to overall success, or opportunities should circumstances change. A strategy manager is likely to have the deepest knowledge about the strategy and the missing pieces. 

How might I influence positive change?

The strategy manager has the deepest understanding of the mechanics of a strategy - what the components do and how they interact, what activities are needed, how performance is assessed. That is not enough though. An organisation is going to get stuck at some critical point, and a strategy manager needs to have the influencing skills to be able to help the organisation get through the trough of despair. This involves having the confidence of senior people in the organisation, a high EQ, the ability to facilitate, and the bravery to have hard conversations.

There is a special change attribute that a good strategy manager should have - the willingness to let eggs break. It takes finely tuned judgement and courage to allow something to fail, but sometimes that is the most effective way to change minds.

If you would like to know more about how to be a more effective strategy manager, contact me at [email protected]