Strategy to Execution – a guide for leaders to optimise the flow of value

90% of organisations fail to execute on their strategies successfully, according to Harvard Business School1. Yet in today’s environment, big change isn’t on the table. Being pragmatic and delivery focused is what is resonating with many leaders across sectors. As transformation agents, this means our job is to bring forward change oftentimes by stealth – aka through a series of ninja moves.

Based on previous experience, I know that enabling the shifts from output to outcome, from project to product, and from heavy to lean governance is ultimately what good will look like. And leveraging concepts like OKRs, value streams, lean portfolio management, and codified ways of working are approaches that will create focus and unlock flow. 

Often leaders don’t want to hear about these concepts. They just want to take their strategy and set-up their portfolio / teams to deliver in the best way possible. 

Over the past few years, I have been testing and refining a pattern to close the gap between strategy and execution. It is a series of steps to convert a high-level strategy into intent that is measurable, value focused, and aligned with a supporting delivery system to enable its execution.

Often the output from the strategy document is a set of goals/wishes and desires that need further clarity and/or a set of projects defined as solutions to be implemented. This needs to be elaborated upon and/or reframed to set an aligned strategic intent with clarity of focus and pathway for empowered teams to deliver.

The scenarios where I’ve used these steps are:

• When a new corporate strategy has been launched

• Annual planning (for enterprise and/or within a business unit)

• Launch of a new digitisation / tech modernisation program

This blog post will share the 'why' and 'what' of each step to spark your thinking about how you may influence strategy to execution conversations.

Step by Step

1. Strategy Alignment

• Vision

  
  

  Why: This provides clarity on why this is important to the organisation and sets the high-level strategic guardrails.

  What: To set the strategic direction and intent – long-term (10-yrs) and medium-term (3-yrs). This provides the overarching why and narrative to gain excitement to deliver. It answers key questions on “where are you going to play and how are you going to win?”

  
  

• Mindset and Design Principles

Why: This provides clarity on what needs to change within the system of work, operating model, and culture/leadership. It informs the ‘How OKRs’.

What: To be clear on what behaviours and changes are needed to guide how we need to operate and organise to deliver the strategy. This answers the question: “what are we optimising for?”

2. Value Alignment

• Understanding the Customer

  
  

  Why: This guides what matters most and creates focus in delivery of outcomes. This informs the 3-year, 1-year outcome definition and portfolio prioritisation.

  What: Starting with the customer means that we build in customer centricity from the start – who is the customer, what are their pains/gains, and what experience do we want to create.

  
  

• Value Definition

  
  

  Why: This means that we are clear on the impact that we are making with our products/services.

  What: How we think about value creation sets the frame (e.g. customer segment, customer journey, product) for how to define the OKR and how E2E value is delivered. This answers the question: “what matters most to our customers?” This frames the definition of shared value E2E, regardless of silos.

  
  

3. Outcome Alignment

• Outcome Definition

  
  

  Why: This means that we are focused on the right things with defined measures to determine success (leading and lagging). An outcome roadmap guides decision making.

  What: Informed by what will deliver the most value, Outcomes and Key Results (OKRs) are defined. These are done in alignment with the 10-year strategic vision, and nested in 3-year, 1-year, and Quarterly cycles.

  
  

• Golden Thread of Value

  
  

  Why: This means that we have alignment from strategy to delivery execution.

  What: This sets up the portfolio of work to be visualised, orchestrated, and enabled. When initiatives/work are connected to OKRs, this clarifies if the right work is being worked on. This creates the golden thread of value.

4. Flow Orchestration

• Leadership and Team Design

  
  

  Why: This means that we are enabling cross-functional collaboration with aligned incentives, without org structure change.

  What: This defines the teams that will deliver and the capabilities required. This may be in the form of Program/Project and/or Value Streams. The focus is on the teams that are designing and improving delivery of your core Value and the Enabling teams required to support. This supports the shift from a project to product delivery model – allowing for E2E value, regardless of silos.

  
  

• Portfolio Demand and Capacity Alignment

  
  

  Why: This means that teams are working on the highest value as aligned to strategy.

  What: Visualising the portfolio of work is required to maintain strategic focus. Individual work can then be prioritised against other work. Dependency management can be explicit. Work alignment to teams can be made. This ensures that the capacity available is aligned to the highest value items that enable the outcomes to deliver the strategy.

  
  

• Cadence and Delivery Pathways

  
  

  Why: This means that teams are executing work in a common rhythm to enable feedback on progress and decision making.

  What: Establishing a delivery heartbeat and guardrails on how to deliver sets the strategy to execution pathway for both speed and control. The heartbeat is nested to support feedback loops in line with the OKRs – 3-year, 1-year, quarterly, and monthly. A modern PMO (aka VRO) is able to orchestrate portfolio delivery and to review portfolio performance and to enable coordinated changes.

These are not intended to be executed once and done. This will be an iterative process. Use this as a guide to help leaders think about the right elements to set-up their strategy to deliver the most value, in the shortest time, with quality, safety and happiness.

Where to from here?

We have created a customer journey map of this ‘How to’ pattern to close the gap between strategy and execution. Download it now and use it as a guide.

Access the Journey Map here.

In addition, as a set of helpful accelerators, we have a number of quick learns and articles available to help you get started on the ‘What’ identified in the steps:

• Idea to Value mapping (aka Flow Mapping) – a canvas to help you understand the flow of work from Idea to Value

• Outcome canvas (aka Outcome Mapping) – a canvas to help you to write good Outcomes and Key Results (OKRs)

• OKR checklist – a set of questions to test how robust your OKRs are

• Living Memo – a powerful artefact to introduce to maintain alignment from strategy definition to execution via the quarterly cadence

• Quarterly cadence – minimum delivery heartbeat to maintain alignment from delivery team execution to strategy

How have you tackled strategy to execution challenges in your organisation? Keen to hear your thoughts.

Reference:

(1) Source for Statistic: Harvard Business School, Professor Robert Kaplan, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action