A Simple, Yet Effective Business Strategy Implementation System

... is a coordinated and collaborative practice that clarifies and focuses everyone on; the main objectives, why those specific objectives are important, the commitments everyone must make to attain them, how, when and who will see those commitments through, and the specific measures, of not only success, but for each of those activities that everyone of us will do, to contribute.

To successfully execute any significant strategic business or organizational initiative you need to follow these steps:

1. Determine what are the one, two, or at most, three most valuable objectives to FOCUS on?   These are devised by answering the following:

• How will you compete for markets, customers and profit?
• In what ways can you differentiate your products and services for a sustainable competitive advantage?
• What are your core competencies?
• Where can you best allocate resources to develop customer-realized value?  
• What do you need to stop doing?   

The answers to these questions and many others specific to your organization's 'purpose,' are your strategic plan.  From the plan, determine your most valuable operational objectives to be pursed by both priority and best chronological order to be attained.  It's vital to know that strategic initiative are best tackled only one at a time and attempting more than three at a time makes implementation impossible, so you must say NO to all other diversions!

2. Communicate the specific objective(s) in the context of the plan to everyone involved -- over and over again - in a highly 'visual' way -- in order to gain alignment and commitment. The people involved in executing the objective need to truly understand it and clearly see their role in making it happen.

3. Create systems / processes / procedures to ensure that the plan is executed in an effective manner.  Well reasoned, simple procedures are critical in ensuring that the good ideas in your plan - become reality.

4. Give people all of the training, resources, help and support they need to follow the systems and processes. Set them up for success. Make it easy for them to win by giving them everything they need to effectively implement the plan. The most important likely being -- time!  

5. Monitor and track business progress. A few keys on this... use as few measures as is necessary; one direct outcome (lag) measurement and three to five key indicator/contributor (lead) measures - you do not want to add in a bunch of extra paperwork and reporting.   Just because something is easy to measure - does not mean you should. Just because something important is very hard to measure - does not mean you can skip it. And, after you have identified the 5 or 6 key measures --- post them for everyone to see. Make sure everyone knows what the targets are, how they are measured and exactly how well you are doing towards those targets. Transparency is the watchword.

6. Lastly, reward successes lavishly - deal decisively with mediocrity.

Capability Systems advises, installs, guides and instructs you on following these steps with great discipline and together, we can achieve very positive results for your entire organization.

Our client-specific accomplish-meant service is delivered using various appropriate templates, checklists, instructional materials and the GoalScape Objectives Management Platform .

To learn more about how you and your team can attain much more from your organization's strategy, please contact us!