Hot Topics on Strategy Execution

Articles of Interest
The following articles of interest are "good reads" to help you understand some of the core strategic performance management issues facing many organizations today.

Why Smooth Execution Depends on Clear Outcomes
This article by S2R describes why developing clarity around outcomes is fundamental to effective strategy execution.  Outcomes can be at four levels:  organizational, portfolio, project and even at the individual level.  We begin by defining an outcome and describing its benefits and then outline a process for the development of meaningful outcomes.  We conclude by defining the role of effective decision leadership to ensure a focus on the right management practices that avoid the negative impact of our personal and team biases on defining outcomes.

The Conference Board 2007 CEO Challenge Survey
Numerous studies are done annually to determine CEOs’ overall level of confidence and concern as they enter a new year. According to the results of the most recent CEO Challenge Survey by the Conference Board, execution is taking precedence over profit and top-line growth as a focus for CEOs around the world. Excellence in execution — a new challenge to the survey — and consistent execution of strategy by top management rank first and third, respectively, as greatest concerns.

The Chief Strategy Officer: Who is accountable for strategy execution?
A 2007 article published by Harvard Business Review highlights three critical strategy execution tasks that a CSO must handle: articulate a clear definition of your company's strategy and explain how each person's work relates to it, facilitate the immediate change initiatives required to execute the strategy, and finally, ensure that strategic decisions don't get watered down or ignored as they're translated throughout the organization. How then can a Strategy Execution Office assist the CSO?

Do You Have an Innovation Scorecard?
This is an article we published on a Strategy Execution blog called The Glue!  It is about the performance metrics of an innovation culture.

To Succeed in the Long Term, Focus on the Middle Term
This HBR article by Geoffrey Moore is critical for understanding the complexities of developing project portfolios based on specific time horizons and the issues of growth, and the innovation and resource commitments that come with it.  This horizon planning approach has significant implications on how organizational performance metrics are designed and managed.

Why Balanced Scorecards Fail
This key article by Art Schneiderman in the Journal of Strategic Performance Management  that is quite revealing.  Speaking of several inherent pitfalls in performance management planning, Art explains, “Therein lies the basic flaw in current goal setting: specific goals should be set based on knowledge of the means that will be used to achieve them. Yet the means are rarely known at the time goals are set. The usual result is that if the goal is too low, we will underachieve relative to our potential. If the goal is too high, we will underperform relative to others' expectations. What's really needed to set rational goals is a means of predicting what is achievable if some sort of standard means for improvement were used.”

Aligning Your Brand to Your Strategy
This S2R article on brand value and customer loyalty is about disciplined leaders who implement brand strategy and model branding in everyday action. “Integrated branding is the process of revealing the brand promise, then aligning the entire organization to deliver that promise” we explain. Living the integrated brand is the road to long-term business success and sustainability.

Strategic Change Levers
Change management is never easy. Sometimes, finding the right levers to keep people motivated during change is counterintuitive. Not surprisingly, many senior executives pull levers that they feel are important without getting any real traction.

Organizational Alignment 
Diagnose just about any organization of more than seven people and you’ll discover that some form of dysfunction is already present.  Think of how fast organizational dysfunction can grow in larger organizations and how the systems start to create a life of their own especially if there is no strategy execution discipline or someone accountable for the integration of all the business processes.