• Strategic intent gives a common purpose, lays emphasis on opportunities to pursue and      inspires    every stakeholder in the organization.
• Strategic intent is usually derived from the company’s vision (or) many a times strategic  intents form the basis for creating a vision for the organisation.
• Strategic Intent directs the organization’s focus, thoughts and actions to the present.
• Strategic intent defines the purpose of your organisations’ existence in the ecosystem. It  defines your actions around growth, operations, innovation and customer.

Strategy execution practices – Organisation goals formalises the key success factors required to execute the intent

• Organisation goals translate the strategic intent into actionable, relevant, measurable goals.
• Organisations goals should be holistic and necessarily span across organisation growth,  operations efficiency, innovation and customer delight.
• Involve all key stakeholders while arriving at organisation goals. Stakeholders buy-in is  critical for business success.

Strategy execution practices – Department goals enable organisation goals

• Key stakeholders across functions and operations must converge and create goals that make  everyone accountable for the execution of the organisation goals.
• Every department / function should involve key stakeholders while arriving at goals and  KRA’s for successful execution.
• Department goals have to be transparent, objective and communicated effectively to all  stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• Each department should necessarily have at least one KRA for every organisation goals. This  way all departments contribute to the overall achievement of the goals.

If organizational performance is but merely its ability to translate market potential into financial success, then it is imperative that “people capability” is a crucial success factor for any organization.

While numerous studies, research, thought & action have gone into developing fairly advanced models & frameworks for competence management, on the ground facts reveal that the largest impediment to organizational success is strategy implementation (for which competence is a vital contributor). So, if competence was indeed being managed well, why doesn’t it reflect in organizational performance?

Global studies reveal that over 50% of managers worldwide attribute lack of capability of their teams to sub optimal performance. Furthermore, our own study reveals that the average capability, as seen by the leadership, vis-a-vis the requirement to implement organizational strategies stands at 67% with the best figure pegged at 72%!

Now, isn’t this shocking! Well, it was for us. So we dug deeper. We wanted to find out what caused this lack of capability & here’s what we found!

While there was no dearth of knowledge (education) or skills (experience) in an organization, the biggest impediment came from the ability to apply the available knowledge & skills in the context that was required by the strategy / for the job at hand.

So, while education & experience could be at best indicators of potential, capability is actually the ability of an individual to adapt & apply the understanding in the present organizational context. It is the consistency & adaptability of one to continuously transform understanding into application and vice versa.

So, apart from the individual’s attitude (which is beyond the control of the organization other than plausibly providing the appropriate work environment), is there a lever that can be perused to coax better application of knowledge?

The answer is yes! If we cull capability requirements from smaller activity chunks, the context in which a particular skill or understanding is to be applied can be called out, thus reducing bias which otherwise hampers contextual application.

Role based capability building: If we draw out a process chart to achieve the goal at hand, we can then identify specific capability requirements for each of the activities that get called out.  Addressing specific capability gaps would then help enhance execution and ultimately performance.

For example, let’s look at a typical vendor development process:

Let’s say negotiations skills is an imperative requirement for the process above. Although the underlying skills of negotiation would remain for all organizations with similar processes as above, the context of vendor relationship (price v/s value) that is unique to each organization, would essentially determine the context in which the negotiation skills are to be applied.

In other words, negotiating with vendors for quality and timeliness requires different adaptability of negotiating skills than negotiating with vendors for price, even though the underlying skills requirements are the same. To perform the activity at hand, hiring the right person with the right skills or training existing people with specific inputs is sure to get better results.

For us to be able to coax our organization to better execute our strategies, isn’t it imperative for us to translate our plans into objective goals for each strategy implementing entity at our firm? Isn’t is important for us to ensure that all the entities in our organization are aligned to our plans? Aren’t these threshold requirements?

Our study of over two dozen organizational leaders across industries & organizational sizes revealed quite another thing!

The clarity in what an organization wished to achieve was found to be a mere 70%

Since optimal execution of business strategy begins with a clear & uniform understanding of what needs to be achieved as an organization, we dug deeper to figure out the causes of this low score, and here’s what we found!

1) Although leaders were quite clear about what to pursue as an organization & what direction to take, this wasn’t necessarily communicated effectively to all layers within the organization. In certain cases, there was an absence of objective goals. In certain others, goals were centered around sales & revenues which essentially meant that the necessary thrust for customer focus, operational efficiency, quality, evolution and other success factors required for sustenance & performance were missing!

2) Yet another crucial factor that determined clarity was the number of goals that an organization pursued. While no goals or for that matter sales only goals obviously meant ineffective management having too many goals was also a problem. Having too many goals blurred priorities thereby reducing clarity on what actually mattered the most to the organization. A global study based on the law of diminishing returns suggests the following

3) The third crucial factor owing to a low clarity in the what, was an inherent disconnect between strategies & the customer! Oxymoronic? Well, its true! Although customers are an indispensible partner for success, not enough attention was being paid to understanding their precise needs. (In case you missed the article, please click here).

4) The fourth crucial factor were the goals themselves! On the one hand, certain organizations provided more impetus to an extrapolation of past achievements while setting goals, thereby not factoring organizational & market potential. On the other hand, organizations laid a lot of thrust on aspirations while setting goals, in which case the market realities were not factored. In effect the desirable balance between market realities, past performance & aspirations remained unachieved.

5) Last, but not the least was a missing alignment from the organizational stakeholders who were actually responsible for implementing the strategies on the ground. We found that the average alignment achieved by organizations was 72%!

The gap stemmed from factors like,

 a) No buy in

b) Only one or few entities could see how they impacted the organizational goals. The remaining organizational entities really did not see the connect between their contributions and the organizational goals.

 c) The measures for any given goal seemed to remain the same across various levels, thus blurring accountabilities & alignment. The following pyramid showcases the typical distribution of focus areas for success.

This really set me thinking how the poll predictions went so horribly wrong!

I don’t doubt for one moment the mathematical models or the competencies of the data analysts. In fact, I do believe that poll analysts would have some amazing models built from years of election research and experience that would most likely predict, to a great deal of accuracy, what the election would turn out to be.

As a person who is obsessed with data, this story reminds me of a fundamental principle of data analysis or for that matter life; that of removing biases! I wonder what the predictions would have looked like if the sampling for the poll surveys had been done with lesser biases. In fact, one of the local English channels covering the US elections reported a few people arguably from the Clinton campaign coming out of the White House exclaiming “where are these people who are voting coming from?”

Isn’t it as simple as the equation,

Even great models fitted to samples with bias = Biased predictions = Biased decisions

Now, to think about it, I realized biases are everywhere and define the way we manage our personal and professional lives. As simple as it is and I’m sure this is no eye opener for anyone, but the question is, how open are we to question our own assumptions and how often do we actually see ourselves doing it?

One of my three commandments I follow in my professional life reads: “Challenge the Status Quo. Question everything, but assumptions & not ideas.” For me, the need for this commandment just gets reinforced and I pledge to myself to follow this more vigorously.

Organizational leaders, more often than not, are able to clearly see the impact their organizations can create in the marketplace. They see the huge opportunities that exist and build strategies to capitalize on them. However, the organization’s performance often tells another story!

How many of us haven’t heard what Norman Vincent Peale said famously “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”? I thought this would make for an interesting parallel in an organizational context.

Let’s say that a few organizations indeed have the capability to land on the moon. Various global studies reveal that while many among them would even barely manage a “lift off”, a few other better performing ones at best, would achieve transatlantic passages. Only the crème de la crème manage to reach the moon. Why the disparity in performance when all the organizations had similar capabilities to start with?

Recently, I came across a very interesting HBR article which captured beautifully and succinctly, this disparity between performance and potential at organizations. Authors Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele call it the VENETIAN BLINDS EFFECT IN BUSINESS. I have attempted to recreate the graphic they used to describe an effect that is found to occur at organizations, big and small.

So this is what happens. In year 1, the management approves a strategic plan that is quite modest for the first year (getting ready to grow big phase) and thereafter, aims to grow to a level that is more commiserative of its potential! At the end of year 1, they realize that the earlier plans of achieving a high growth in year 2 might not be “realistic” and that they’re not “ready” yet to achieve the planned rate of performance improvement. Thus, at the start of year 2, a new plan is prepared which projects rather uninspiring results for the subsequent year while once again promising a fast rate of performance improvement thereafter! This recurs in an organization’s lifetime and thus the performance of an organization is never really close to what its potential is! In fact, if things are going reasonably well, the starting point for each year’s new “blind” may be ONLY a BIT higher than the previous year’s starting point, but rarely does performance match the true potential of an organization.

While some organizations go into the “MAKE BELIEVE” phase of saying that they’re performing well, they’re, most often than not, comparing their performance to “the modest targets” shown in the graphic and not really the potential they posses.

And then, there are a set of newer breeds of organizations that tend to focus primarily on one parameter of performance (mostly growth), invariably at the COST of other parameters that sustain a business!

If organizations are value creation engines, in that sense, organizational performance MUST be a reflection of the business, technological and social logic they combine to create the VALUE. Therefore, I opine that organizations that tend to focus any one parameter of performance at the cost of others are not really “performing”!

Amidst all this, we see that a few organizations (the crème de la crème) manage to achieve results that are a true reflection of their potential.

SO, WHAT SETS THE HIGH PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS APART?

Well, we believe that there are primarily three things that contribute to the disparity between performance and potential and when these are constantly focused on and improved upon sets an organization well on its path to greatness!

1. Clarity in the WHAT
2. Clarity in the HOW
3. Science of effective business execution

CLARITY IN THE WHAT

While studies reveal that the leadership at organizations are quite clear on what “largely” needs to be achieved, sometimes a clear cut definition is found lacking in terms of saying we need to GET to Point A from Point B within a specific timeframe.

Let’s go back to the example of those organizations we spoke about earlier, that possess capabilities to LAND on the MOON. While the leadership at most of these organizations would be quite clear about the overarching mission of landing on the moon, only the highly performing companies would “translate” that mission to a goal that every entity within the organization could work towards.

Consider this! When Eisenhower (erstwhile President of the United States) announced the mission of achieving space supremacy by the US during his regime, there was indeed a lot of activity, including the creation of NASA.  However, not until the next couple of years, when President Kennedy stated that the goal was to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, did we hear about a man named Neil Armstrong who actually set foot on the moon!

CLARITY IN THE HOW

This is yet another characteristic of great companies. Not only do they clearly mention what are the results they have set out to achieve, there is clarity among every entity in the organization on HOW their everyday activities have to change to support the organization goals. There is enough impetus laid on getting a buy in from the strategy implementers during the formulation of strategies and, a clear sense of HOW every entity needs to contribute is well established.

Why is this important you ask? Well, Stephen Covey put it simply when he said if you want to achieve goals you’ve never achieved before, you need to start doing things that you’ve never done before!

Now let’s go back to our previous example of those set of organizations that are shooting for the moon. Let’s say that a certain Mr. X was hired by the company because of his skills in improving the fuel efficiency of an engine. Furthermore, let’s say that Mr. X has been working on improving the fuel efficiency of cars since the time he joined the organization, because that was the focus of the organization up until now.

If this Mr. X continues to work along the same things that he’s been working on in the past, and perhaps even harder than ever before, do you think he would still be able to make any meaningful contribution to the organizational goal? Remember, the organization now wants to land on the moon. Wouldn’t you agree that the organization would rather benefit if his “focus changed” towards making rocket engines more efficient?

I agree that the example is a bit exaggerated and may even sound absurd, but unfortunately this is a sad reality at many organizations!

SCIENCE OF EFFECTIVE BUSINESS EXECUTION

This is perhaps the largest gap that prevents organizations from achieving “greatness”. In fact, studies reveal that close to 75% of organizations globally, struggle to implement their strategies!

Although we might know what to achieve as an organization and the path we need to take, we are most often than not pulled into activities that we perceive as “URGENT” on an everyday basis. Chris McChesney, from the Franklin Covey Institute, calls this the whirlwind effect. (To know more about this, please click here). The trick is therefore to stay focused on the important things we need to do, amidst this whirlwind of activities that we perceive as URGENT on a daily basis!

This is yet another undertaking that great organizations do really really well. They are able to break down the goal into specific activities that different entities need to perform and get them to see the importance! Allocate the best possible resources based on an optimal competency fit, identify and track indicators that can be influenced on a daily / weekly basis, identify risks and prepare for a suitable response and finally, influence performance to achieve the goal as opposed to measuring performance as a post mortem of what has already happened.

Let’s go back to the organizations who want to land on the moon. Consider this scenario.

One organization goes about doing what it was doing in the past, and perhaps in its view, more efficiently than before. It measures its performance vis-a-vis its target of landing on the moon only at the end of the year.

V/S

Another organization that,

• Breaks down the task of landing on the moon to activities like building an efficient rocket, hire the best astronaut, acquire funding among others.
• Identified how much of time they have (known as TAKT in Lean parlance) to complete each activity
• Allocate the best resources (competence) they have for each activity
• Identify the metrics they could track on a daily / weekly basis (like time to build the rocket, competency level of the astronaut v/s what’s required for a successful mission)
• Work constantly & cohesively towards improving these metrics
• Influence performance through coaching, mentoring etc on a continuum.

Who in your view better stands to land on the moon?

I’m guessing you’d agree with me that organization 1 is more likely to fall short, really short. Perhaps not even being able to take off! At best, achieve a transatlantic flight.

Guess what their immediate reaction would be at the end of the “performance review”?  Most likely, “To reset the target for the next year saying that they’ll need some more time to get ready before actually being able to land on the moon”, a dynamic that is captured beautifully by the VENETIAN BLINDS EFFECT!

With organization 2, even if there are certain “external” factors that may prevent it from landing on the moon, there is certainly a high likelihood that they’ll at least land on the stars! Right you are Mr. Peale!

Simple stuff, you say? Yes, I agree. But sadly, very often neglected!

Here’s an interesting question I’d like to ask you, “Would people in our organization still be busy even if they are given no goals to pursue?”

Most likely the answer is yes!

Why is this the case?

Well, Chris McChesney, from the 4 disciplines of execution, attributes this to the “whirlwind effect” which takes precedence at workplace. He defines the “whirlwind effect” as the everyday job that people think is the “real” work that they need to do.

However, most often than not, activities required to achieve a new goal require new efforts and initiatives. Although people tend to think that these new efforts are certainly important, they tend to pass them off as being not urgent for them to pursue. This is because they are caught in the “whirlwind” of doing their everyday jobs that they prioritize as being urgent.

And, needless to say when urgency and importance clash, urgency tends to win! Think about the last time you thought something was important and interesting for the achievement of your organizational goals, but you couldn’t spend time on it because you were drawn into the tussle of executing the “everyday activities”.

Here’s another thought provoking question we need to ask ourselves constantly: Is what we think as urgent on a day to day basis really important for us to achieve our goals?

Chris also quotes Ram Charan, the execution Guru from his book, Execution – The discipline of getting things done, where he states that “70% of poor execution is due to poor execution of leaders. It’s rarely for lack of smarts or vision!”

So then, what are the 7 things we can focus on to ensure that we substantially improve our chances of achieving our goals?

1. Do we, at first, know clearly what we need to achieve as an organization?
2. Does everyone in the organization know clearly “WHAT“ they need to do to, for the organization to achieve its goals?
3. Does everyone know “HOW” to achieve their goals?
4. Is there a clear idea about what organizational capabilities, processes and systems are required to achieve the goals and where are we currently as an organization?
5. Do we have leading and lagging indicators for the goals that we can use to monitor and control the execution?
6. Does everyone in the organization have a clear cut accountability towards the organizational goals?
7. Do you as the organizational leader spend time towards performance coaching? Have you enabled a culture of  performance coaching?

As with any other effort, successful execution requires a concerted and cohesive approach, otherwise we are leaving many things to chance! And, I’m sure you’d agree with me that leaving things to chance almost never guarantees any results!

P.S. Metis ERC(I) Pvt. Ltd. has developed frameworks and philosophies that enable a scientific and cohesive approach to business execution. Please get in touch with us to know more about them.

Anyone who’s managed a child would know how easy (or not!) it is to get the child to do a chore you want her to. Be it the Gen X, Gen Y, millenials or even 5 year olds; impose your decision on them and most likely you have invited a thunder storm! Even if they grudgingly accept to do it, the quality of performing the task would leave you flabbergasted.

What then do the smart parents of today do? Don’t you explain to your kids why they need to do what they need to do? Isn’t it important for you to get your child to see the benefits of their actions for them to wilfully do something? And haven’t the results of such a wilful and passionate effort from your child always been remarkable?

If this were true for children, imagine how important it is for your educated, smart and highly capable team members in your organization. Imagine the incredible things they could accomplish if they were all passionately bought in to your plans!

So as a first step in your journey of achieving success:

1. Make sure to involve your team in the important decisions you make.
2. Make them a part of the strategic planning process.
3. Factor in the ground realities your team suggests to make your plan even better! Foster a culture of idea sharing.

Not only will you end up with an even better plan, you will have a passionately willing team that will strive to translate your plans into the desired outcomes. After all wouldn’t you agree that unless your co-workers execute your strategy the way it’s supposed to be, the chances of achieving success are not very promising no matter how brilliant the plan itself is?

Do write to us to know more about :

• How our War room, could facilitate the formation of a Holistic and Sustainable strategy roadmap along with your execution team.
• How our disruptive philosophies and frameworks facilitate Strategically aligned execution driven by your execution team.
• How Accountability and Execution Metrics can become an intrinsic part of your High Performance / Execution Culture.

As we go on with “winning” in our lives, we tend to chase a select few things that we feel are the most important at any moment while giving other necessary and critical things a complete miss.

Organizations, I believe, work in the exact same manner. While we are busy growing our organizations, we get extremely busy with everyday activities that we, as leaders, often tend to overlook completely the necessary organizational drivers that may come back to haunt us later.

Let me illustrate this with an example. During the process of scaling, we are so busy acquiring customers and fulfilling our promised to the customers that we do not necessarily pay a lot of attention to the either the kind of people we are hiring or in up skilling our existing workforce. This often results in a stage where we would have grown to a point beyond which even though opportunities exist, we would be unable to capitalize on them. This, primarily, since we would just not have the organizational capability we used to have (because of wrong hires because we were too focused on getting someone to help us with the rush, or our existing workforce capability remaining at the same level as it used to be earlier and not what it should be to sustain our growth). This results in plateauing of growth due to our not focusing on what we should have all along! The power of absence!

This is just one example. There are many key drivers that are important for an organization which should not be overlooked in the rush for growth and scale. Needless to say, the best way forward to mitigate the overwhelming power of absence is by acknowledging and acting upon the key organizational drivers proactively.

1. Right fit mantra
Having the right framework to hire, retain, motivate, develop and reward talent in an organisation determines its capability. Committed and motivated employees will perform optimally and keep up with an organisations competency requirements for today and tomorrow.

2. Change swiftness
Change is constant. An organization’s capability is defined by its ability to identify opportunity and risk areas and act quickly. A truly agile organisation should be both dynamic (adaptive and quick) and stable (reliable and efficient).

3. Customer orientation
Are you delivering customer promise on time every time? Building a culture of customer orientation in all internal and external processes, systems and people would determine your organisations capability to deliver customer promise.

4. Team work
Build a framework for seamless cross-functional working and collaboration towards a common goal. An organisation’s capability improves from sharing of ideas and talent seamlessly across boundaries.

5. Innovation and continuous improvement
Maintain competitive advantage through both new stream (Improving customer outcomes) and main stream (Improving bottom line) through continuous improvement and innovation. Build a culture that promotes innovation and strong processes and frameworks to augment it.

6. Alignment
Everybody in the organisations is clear about the strategic intent of the organisation and how their jobs impact the outcomes. Align processes, systems and people to the organisations strategic intent.

7. Learning
Storing and retrieving knowledge learnt from past experiences and using it to continuous improve and innovate is the organisational ability to grow.  A robust organisational learning framework is critical to detecting and filling gaps that may arise in working towards its goals.

8. Leadership
Organisation should identify and builds capabilities for leaders to drive and achieve an organisation’s strategic goals, develop their skills and to lead and inspire their people to give their best. Plan successors for key positions by identifying, assessing and developing employees.

Read on, if…

• You have a great idea that you want to build a business on
• You have P&L responsibility for a business that has been doing really well but is being challenged by the growing competitive landscape
• You head a business that has achieved remarkable growth in the past but somehow you’ve not been able to grow as fast in recent times
• You want to build a “great” organization
• Or, if you’re just interested in knowing more…

Great ideas are hard to come by. Think about the hours of brain storming you would have when you were putting together your business. Now that it’s up and running you’re faced with a number of things that keep you awake at night; revenue growth, profitability margins, customer acquisition, customer retention and I’m sure the list just goes on….

Well, I’m sure you’d agree with me that there is no magic formula that can take away all your troubles at once. But when approached tactfully and systematically, you’re certainly going to increase the chances of finding a solution that can work. These 13 things about your organization are those that you cannot overlook, whatever be the stage of your company.

• Clarity on strategic intent: Wait… before you jump at me telling me that you obviously have a strategy in mind, let me preface by saying that I certainly acknowledge that you have a strategy in mind and a sound one at that! But the point here is about the cohesiveness of the strategy among your leadership team and a strategy that cuts across all the quadrants of a business life cycle, which is sadly, often overlooked.
  
• Capability: Is your organization capable of delivering that strategy?
• Alignment: Is your organization aligned to your thought process?
• Readiness: Are the organizational initiatives you’ve planned scalable? Would they be redundant later?
• Performance enabling systems: Are the systems you peruse on a daily basis helping you achieve your strategy?
• Conducive Work environment:How conducive is the work environment to help the organization execute the strategy?
• Expectations understanding: How well are the expectations communicated and understood by all the stakeholders? Does everyone know how they should contribute to help the organization achieve its goals?
• Risk mitigation:How well are risks across functions identified and managed?
• Learning: How well is learning managed to help the organization execute its strategy and remain competitive?
• Knowledge management: How well is knowledge within the organization managed? Are you having to reinvent the wheel many times at various levels of your organization, thus limiting your response times?
• Innovation: How well is the innovation mechanism managed within each function to help the organization stay competitive?
• Customer orientation: How oriented is the organization to its customers? Does everyone know what matters to the customer the most and how to engage with the customer to ensure that the customer perceives us as the best choice for what we do?
• Knowledge of the customer: How well does the organization know about its customers? Do we know what defines the buying pattern of our customer and what is the value we add? In essence, do we know who will buy our services and why?

All these 13 things can be measured and tracked. As the saying goes, what get’s measured, get’s done! You don’t have to have a standard list of measures. Use what works for you, but measure them, track them, work on them and keep improving them.