Linking back all of the activities of your senior team to the strategic plan.It seems obvious, but often organizations create a plan, communicate it, and almost expect the rest to happen by magic. We're now 5 steps 'away' from where our journey started with our strategic plan - but the importance of connecting remuneration back to strategy cannot be understated.If you got step 5 right, and did a good job of linking performance management > goals > strategy - then this should be easy enough. 16. It never ends and is 100% iterative. Perhaps just prior to a team meeting or the regular strategy sessions you've booked into people’s diaries.Updates should include a quantitative measure of progress against the goal, as well a short line or two of commentary to add flavor and give a rounded picture of progress.Goals should never be seen as static – it’s a given that sometimes you’ll need to edit the deadline of a goal, or even rewrite it entirely as your organisation evolves. Each of which is a key element in a successful execution programme.There are really two key components to effective tracking and reporting. Where reporting differs from tracking, is that your reporting should be at a strategic level rather than a goal by goal level. Logical enough, but the simple reality is that 'knowing what to do' is the easy bit. The different steps you need to address to ensure the success of your strategy. But one of the reasons we created As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this article, and any aspects of the strategy life cycle that we may not have given enough credit to! Business Process Modeling As a business analyst, your role is key in defining the requirements during planning and in facilitating solutions to business challenges.
This is really the first step of the Cascading process. The way we built our strategy reporting suite in Here’s an example of a board report that we offer in Cascade in-case it helps you to formulate ideas about how you want your own reports to look and function.This is where things start to become a little more progressive – and in our opinion where the vast majority of strategy execution approaches start to unravel. You’d be hard pressed to find actual users of the most common performance management systems that have positive things to say about the experience – let alone espouse on how it helps them to better execute strategy.In our view, performance management should be a natural extension of goal setting, which in turn is a natural extension of your strategic plan. Firstly, you need to ensure that everyone in your organization is regularly updating the progress of their own goals. 4. 18. In reality Communication needs to be two-way. Organizations fill their strategy roles with 'ideas' people.
Execution is producing results in the context of those choices. To successfully execute a strategy - you need your entire business process to reflect the importance of that strategy.Performance management (and appraisals in general) are often viewed as the sole domain of Human Resources. For example, you need to establish a mechanism for people to feedback their views about the strategy both at the start and as it rolls out. While fixing the organizational objectives, it is essential that the factors which influence the selection of objectives must be analyzed before the selection of objectives. At a high level, the execution journey encompasses the following steps:So, how to successfully execute a strategy? Some ideas for ways that you can facilitate this kind of constructive communication include:Don’t fall into the trap of doing a great job of communicating at the start, only to see efforts fall away as people go back to business-as-usual! 17. The biggest obstacle to achieving good strategy execution is the lack of well-defined process to manage the translation of strategy into targeted and synchronised cross-functional execution. A simple Strategy Execution process like the 8 Model orients managers to take the right actions at the right time. That’s fine, and indeed should be encouraged – so long as visibility of those changes exists.Effective tracking lays the groundwork for effective reporting. Goals owned by individuals that will actually move your plan towards fruition. It is therefore a critical part of the execution journey.As you go through the process of appraising your people, you need to be able to draw clear connections between how well they've executed on their specific component of the strategic plan, and their ultimate assessment / score / etc.The only way that a performance management process can help you execute on your plan is if it meets the following checks:Very few of the off-the-shelf performance management systems you can buy tick those boxes (naturally we think that The natural evolution of performance management is remuneration. The different steps you need to address to ensure the success of your strategy. Strategy Implementation offers new chances for creating competitive advantage. Strategy Execution Strategic execution requires considerably more time, commitment, and resources than developing the plan itself. Worse still, they’re viewed as a process for the sake of a process – or at least for the sake of management alone. Unfortunately, most plans just end up gathering dust on the shelf, and those that do proceed to implementation often don’t receive the necessary attention and resources to achieve the desired outcomes. You've put so much effort into planning, communicating and goal setting - yet so many people fail to follow through with strategy into the one thing that ultimately we all (almost all) work for - money. There is a learning aspect to strategy and execution as organizations adapt to changes in the environmental. Most everyone would agree that you cannot achieve good results without having good execution; similarly, most would agree that having a good strategy alone is no surefire formula for success. Goal setting can help tease out things like:Goals will also become the bedrock for your ongoing tracking, reporting and performance management. The business analyst must be aware that any project may require the redesign and redevelopment of processes and that processes must enhance and meet the organization business goals. It could be travel perks, sending people to conferences, extending them additional leadership opportunities - anything at all that you're doing on a merit basis.It's important to establish firm links between the rewards you give out and the execution of (elements) of your strategy - this needs to be deeply embedded in the culture of the organization.There are plenty of software tools on the market that address elements of the above.