The following six steps can help increase the chances of your strategy being successful. The steps are based on the authors' insights and experiences, as well as their book "Strategy with meaning".
We present here six “approaches” that will hopefully inspire you and your co-workers to become even more successful with your strategies in 2020 and beyond.
1: Think development along with execution
When leaders work with strategy, it is obvious to many to think, "First we make the strategy - and then we implement it." By following this approach, management puts a lot of time and energy into developing the strategy - and then passing on the strategy as a gift to the organisation.
It poses the challenge that those who implement the strategy often do not understand the background or feel the necessary ownership. Potentially, the management of the strategy can also make decisions that do not quite match the needs of the customers, especially if the management in everyday life is not in close contact with the customers' specific issues.
It can therefore do a great deal of harm to a business if the development and execution of a strategy are not combined.
This can be done, for example, by involving selected key people from the organisation early in the process, for example when management starts to have some ideas for the content of the strategy.
Thus, a strategy does not have to be fit and ready until the organisation hears about it. The benefit will often be that a decision or action in the strategy becomes even much more relevant and well-informed and that the employees are strong ambassadors and believers, even when the strategy is adopted.
2: Create meaning, commitment and drive - and reach your goals
Our research and experience in strategy execution have identified three factors that are critically important to ensure effective execution of strategies:
Meaning: The strategy must seem real, sensible and meaningful to those who are going to help bring it to fruition.
Commitment: Contributors must feel both enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice in relation to the efforts included in the plan to implement the strategy.
Acting power: Those who execute the strategy must have the necessary amount of time, energy, resources and skills to actually execute the strategy.
In order to ensure the real significance of the three factors in practice, they have been validated qualitatively, theoretically and statistically. Practice has shown that when leaders remember to think about the creation of meaning, commitment and drive in their strategic development and execution activities, they succeed faster and better. This has made it possible to increase the quality and progress of execution several times over. It greatly enhances a company's ability to win in a market that is fiercely competitive.
“The involvement of leadership groups within the organisation must be done as early as possible.”
3: Activate and involve all management forces
Our experience with strategy development also showed that efforts targeting departments and individuals are several times more effective than cross-cutting communication efforts, such as major meetings, employee newsletters, and other mass information techniques.
Dialogue is therefore far more effective than one-way communication, and therefore time and space must be created to engage in dialogue with the individual employee about his or her experience of the strategy and contribution to execution. It is crucial for the successful development and execution of a strategy that a company's top management has a constructive and intensive interaction with all other management forces in the company.
The involvement of the leadership forces in the organisation must be done as early as possible! Of course, there may be a need for management to take initial discussions under full confidentiality, but early involvement of the other leaders generally benefits the momentum of execution. In this context, one must be ready to deal with and accept objections, different points of view and critical voices with an outstretched hand willing to listen and adapt.
Here again, if you listen and take the possibility of dialogues seriously, you as a leader can create a much higher degree of involvement and ‘buy-in’ - instead of "just" informing the organisation about the content of the strategy.
4: Combine classic project management methods with dynamism
Many executives have learned about good project management and in doing so have benefited from classic project tools such as Gantt charts, SMART goals, budgets, schedules, deadlines, resource allocations, activity plans and more.
These are all tools that can be extremely beneficial for the success of a project. There is just the chin about them that the final plan can be based on what the manager himself has been able to devise solutions.
Therefore, valuable input from clients, colleagues in other departments or perhaps realism may be lacking in relation to how detailed it is possible to plan for a long time in the future. Therefore, there is a risk that the use of the classic project tools can be a waste of time if the prerequisites for the plan are exceeded for example four to six months.
It is also conceivable that at some point the content is no longer relevant or relevant to the customers or the company itself, and in that situation it is harmful to stick to a well-defined plan.
Practice shows that it can be a great advantage to combine the classic project tools with more agile methods to execute on strategic efforts. For example, agile methods often have a built-in element that ensures that you do not plan ahead in time than you have the resources to ensure execution.
In many cases, the agile and dynamic methods also have a built-in focus on continually securing feedback from the customers who must have an improved value experience. This is especially relevant when ensuring that the strategic work does not "close itself".
Therefore, in order to ensure the maximum value creation of the strategic efforts, it would be a good idea to make conscious choices about whether to use classic or more agile and dynamic project methods.
“Our experience shows that it can be extremely motivating for a team when obstacles are removed quickly and effectively”
5: Organise strategic execution in teams with strong mandates
In many companies, we have seen a tendency for a selected leader to become a rope manager or responsible for a strategic initiative. In many cases, this has led to the individual leader in practice becoming a one-man team which can quickly lead to a loss of motivation.
We therefore see great potential in organising the two or three most important efforts in the strategy into teams where the members together have the skills to lift the task from A to Z.
What is important then is that these teams are given the necessary mandate to carry out the actions needed to succeed and that a member of the top management is actively involved and takes responsibility for continuously removing the obstacles encountered by the team. .
Practice also shows that it can be extremely motivating for team work when obstacles are removed quickly and effectively. In addition, of course, a disciplined meeting structure must be established for the team, and they must have the support and training needed to become a high-performance team that accomplishes strategic execution effectively.
6: Train leadership teams in critical leadership skills with relevance to real life projects
A global survey of 700 executives conducted by PWC in 2013 showed that in practice, only eight percent of executives surveyed have the appropriate tools to both develop strategies and execute them. And only 13 percent of executives surveyed say they have the appropriate tools to execute strategies alone.
The figures support our own research in the field, which has uncovered an often implicit expectation that "execution" is something that a leader should be able to accomplish. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
Market development is moving faster than ever, and there is an ocean of issues and topics that you, as a manager, must always relate to. Therefore, in many companies, there may be a need to strengthen the managers' competencies in relation to, for example, prioritising, making good decisions quickly, dealing with group dynamics, working dynamically, maintaining focus on the customer's needs and implementing change.
One form of competency development for executives that is proving to be of great effect is concrete strategy projects that move the company from A to B. The contradiction is quite often classical teaching that is not always directly linked to the strategy.
When developing competence development with relevant projects of great importance, it strengthens motivation and leads to a higher intensity for the participants.
The six approaches to strategy are based on the authors' insights and experiences, which are also gathered in their book, ‘Strategy with Meaning’ here.