Key Questions For Strategy Deployment

Strategy is not about doing the important things but rather the process of choosing, the responsibility of leaders to grasp the situation and decide the plan forward.  I always tell others that strategy deployment is a focusing mechanism. This is about sharpening your focus by selecting the vital few breakthrough objectives.

The strategy deployment process identifies and concentrates resources on the vital few stretch achievements that support the vision. It separates those performance issues that require dramatic improvement from the many incremental improvements that can achieved at the local level. All the changes that the leadership believes to be incremental are skimmed out of the strategic plan and addressed through quality in daily work. The remaining category of contribution – the vital few breakthrough achievements – becomes the heart of the strategy deployment process.

Asking intelligent questions is critical for executives who are responsible for making decisions and setting corporate strategy. Below are a series of questions that you can use that evaluate strategy comprehensively.

Breakthrough Objectives Questions

• Can the “Breakthrough Objective” be measured?
• Do “Breakthrough Objectives” clearly tie to your Strategic Plan Objectives?
• Is the advantage unique enough to distinguish ourselves from competition?
• Do the breakthrough objectives clearly indicate how we consider winning 3-5 years down the line?
• Have you stretched your target past the 3-5 year outlook that would be considered breakthrough performance?
• Has the team reached consensus that these are the critical few breakthroughs that will lead to competitive advantage?

Annual Objective Questions

• Can the “Annual Objectives” be measured?
• Do “Annual Objectives” clearly tie to your breakthroughs?
• Is the advantage unique enough to distinguish ourselves from competition?
• Is the “Annual Objective” stretched to carve out a good chunk of the breakthrough objective where it would be considered a healthy challenge for the organization?
• Can actions realistically be taken within a 1 year time frame in order to achieve the result (assess time to implement plus pull through results)?
• Has the team reached consensus that these are the critical few “ Annual Objectives” that will lead to competitive advantage?

Improvement Priorities Questions

• Can the “Improvement Priority” be measured?
• Do “Improvement Priorities” clearly tie to your “Annual Objectives” ?
• Is the “Improvement Priority” specific to a business value stream and what action will be taken to deliver a result?
• Is the action to be taken a new approach or the same as current operations? (If it is the latter, you may need to dive deeper into what you will do differently or better)
• Can actions be taken within a 1 year time frame in order to achieve this Improvement priority (implementation time + results achieved)?
• Does the improvement priority have potential to become a standard part of the business? (i.e. Daily Management)
• Has the team reached consensus that these are the critical few “ Improvement Priorities” that will lead to competitive advantage?

Targets to Improve Questions

• Can the “Targets to Improve” realistically impact
• Improvement Priorities
• Annual Objective
• Breakthrough Objective – if achieved with long term sustainment
• Are the “Targets to Improve” SMART?
• Are there both leading and lagging indicators?
• Can the “Targets to Improve” be measured and maintained routinely to meet our monthly cadence review?
• Has the team reached consensus that these are the critical few “Targets to Improve” that will lead to a competitive advantage?

By posing the right questions, you can help assure the best outcomes for your organization.

If I had to take one lesson from my business experience it is without focus you are lost.  Infinity is not available to us in this life.  Time and money are limited and as such we must utilize these limited resources effectively.  I can see no way to achieve our objectives other than to utilize discretion, prioritization and selection.  For after all, some things are simply more critical and more important.

5 Ways to Ensure Team Alignment

Whether you’re managing a two-person operation or a department of 100, it’s nearly impossible for your organization to grow and move on to the next chapter of success if your whole team isn’t on the same page.

Teams are at their best when they work cohesively and rally around shared goals. Alignment in the workplace occurs when all team members have a better understanding of company goals and have a clear vision for collective (and individual) long-term success. It isn’t enough to know the end destination; you need to all be rowing in the same direction.

Here are five ways to help encourage better team alignment in your business:

1. Communicate your purpose and strategy from the top down

Are frontline employees less likely than company leaders to say that they understand how their role contributes to purpose. If so this poses a considerable barrier to team alignment.

Aligning your organization begins with establishing and articulating your organizational purpose and strategy. While the CEO’s role in communicating the company purpose and strategy is an important one, management is responsible for translating how it applies to teams and individuals.

2. Tie people’s individual contributions to the overall business objectives

When people understand their role in your company’s grand plan, great things happen. Hanover Research found that 86% of senior leaders reported a 5% or greater increase in employee satisfaction when employees felt that their work was aligned with strategic goals and initiatives.

One proven way to track this is through the objectives and key results (OKRs) model. OKR is a collaborative goal-setting framework used by teams and individuals. It has helped companies to plan and measure success in alignment with their overall company strategies.

3. Encourage peer-to-peer collaboration over competition

Collaborative workplaces reward teamwork and encourage trust among employees. This prevents the old-school dog-eat-dog workplaces of previous generations.

4. Celebrate team wins

Recognizing individual’s and team’s large and small accomplishments encourages employees and reminds them that you value their contributions. Recognize individuals regularly, encourage peer-to-peer recognition, and even involve cross-functional teams by hosting in-person or virtual social events to celebrate cross-team collaboration and successes.

When recognizing individual and team accomplishments, tie them to wider organizational strategies to continually drive home the impact they have on the company’s purpose.

5. Use a collaborative planning process

Build the right processes and implement the right tools for team alignment to thrive. Using a collaborative planning process can help you get all the information you need to marry bottom-up tactical planning with top-down organizational strategy. Involving teams early on will help with engagement and close the communication gap between leadership and frontline workers.

Team alignment has a significant impact on the overall performance of your business. Without clear communication on your organization’s goals and shared company values, your team members might find it challenging to present a united front and stay engaged.

Strategy: Sharpening Your Focus

Recently, Pascal Dennis wrote a post that really resonated with me about strategy deployment. His point is that strategy is not about doing the important things but rather the process of choosing, the responsibility of leaders to grasp the situation and decide the plan forward.  I always tell others that strategy deployment is a focusing mechanism. This is about sharpening your focus by selecting the vital few breakthrough objectives.

The strategy deployment process identifies and concentrates resources on the vital few stretch achievements that support the vision. It separates those performance issues that require dramatic improvement from the many incremental improvements that can achieved at the local level. All the changes that the leadership believes to be incremental are skimmed out of the strategic plan and addressed through quality in daily work. The remaining category of contribution – the vital few breakthrough achievements – becomes the heart of the strategy deployment process.

One of the hardest parts of being a leader is making critical decisions when multiple tasks are competing for attention. When individuals and teams are confronted by multiple issues, they often try to take them all on… at once. Because they are overwhelmed, they make progress on none of them. The result: inertia and a lack of change.

The job of management is to steer the focus of their organization towards those few vital priorities that will keep or bring the organization into alignment with the demands of its customers. Once these are identified, employees can then pinpoint the group, division, factory, department, or project gaps that must be closed to stay aligned with the strategic direction of your organization.

Leadership must articulate a vision and goals describing what they believe want to accomplish. They must provide a clear charge to all layers of management and process improvement team members to work towards this vision, making sure that everyone understands the vision. Leaders work with others to set specific goals and a manageable scope for each action. Focus on defining the attributes needed for success and empower the team to develop efficient and effective approaches to accomplish them.

Strategy deployment is the system for setting management’s compass toward True North. It is a tool to align people, activities, and performance metrics with strategic priorities. It can be used to communicate direction, coordinate activity, and monitor progress. It enables members of the organization to work together in the most creative way to define and achieve the strategic intent.

If I had to take one lesson from my business experience it is without focus you are lost.  Infinity is not available to us in this life.  Time and money are limited and as such we must utilize these limited resources effectively.  I can see no way to achieve our objectives other than to utilize discretion, prioritization and selection.  For after all, some things are simply more critical and more important. 

Four Steps for Strategic Alignment

Bridging the gap between strategy development and execution is one of the biggest challenges many organizations face. Studies repeatedly show that, regardless of the quality of the strategies, companies find it difficult to successfully implement them and, therefore, to realize the competitive advantages they were aiming for. Probably the most important driver for successful strategy implementation is "strategic alignment," that is the systematic process of bringing the actions of each business unit and employee into line with the organization's strategic objectives. The challenge is to make them all work together towards a common goal, thereby improving the overall performance of the company.

Here are four steps that can help you in aligning your staff your strategy:

Start With the Company’s Mission and Vision

If your organization has a mission and/or vision statement, it’s a good place to start. You’re unlikely to identify specific or tactical goals with only this information; however, it should offer a north star in guiding the company’s purpose in the short and long term.

If your organization does not already have its own mission and vision, creating one is another strong starting place for the strategic planning process. The organization’s mission and vision provide a framework of its ultimate purpose and guide the team’s goals and activities.

Create the Strategic Plan

With a broader picture of company priorities in sight, now is the time to design a strategy for the organization’s activities to support success across teams. The process of strategic planning, goal-setting and creating roadmap action plans are outside the scope of this article, but there are scores of articles, books and courses on these topics. A few tools and frameworks for consideration include PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis, TOWS matrix and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Whichever approach you use, be sure to include the entire organization in the process. If it’s a small team, everyone may have a hands-on role. In a larger training organization, gathering input in focus groups or providing planning updates and inviting feedback may suffice. Involving the whole team will encourage ownership of the resulting strategy and action plan, incentivizing everyone to deliver on the plan and effectively support the organization.

Share, Implement, Evaluate and Report on Progress

Now that you’ve created your strategic plan, it’s time to share it across the organization. Be sure to create audience-specific versions and messaging and to distribute the plan to the organization, the executive team, business unit leaders — and the company as a whole.

The plan should include success measures for you to monitor and report over the course of the year. Remember to create audience-specific updates, such as:

·        Biweekly inputs and internal updates for the organization.

·        A monthly dashboard for the executive team.

·        Bimonthly Lean/CI council meetings.

·        A quarterly newsletter for business unit leaders.

·        An annual infographic for all employees.

Stay Flexible, and Realign as Needed

In your regular reporting to key stakeholders, include an opportunity to check in on any change in priorities across the organization. Don’t become inflexibly attached to the annual plan; keep an agile approach, and adjust goals and activities to maintain alignment with company success.

Aligning business units and staff members with the organization's strategy is not a one-time deal but an ongoing process that requires constant leadership, communication, and monitoring. Moreover, it requires diplomatic skills in dealing with different types of personalities. This requires sure instincts and good change management. Strategic alignment is not an easy task particularly in large companies. However, it is indispensable in order to walk the chosen path successfully.

Focus on Outcomes Rather Than Outputs With These 6 Strategies

So many businesses miss a key point to achieving their goals. It is easy to think that what you need to attain extraordinary success is to focus on results and use these results to measure your progress. There is more success to be had by focusing on outcomes rather than output.

Dr. Deming, Dr. Wheeler, and others have famously said “Managing a company by means of monthly results is like trying to drive a car by watching the yellow line in the rear-view mirror.”

I have a young driver at home and I’m always saying to look forward. It’s the same in business. And while it may sound like common sense, it’s amazing how many executives and operating managers are doing just the opposite by the way they operate their performance management process.

Instead of focusing on your goal, the key may be to focus on process – and forget the result entirely. The road to any goal is a matter of taking one step after the next. The process will take you right where you want to be. Results are the enemy that distract and prevent us from seeing this.

When you focus on the process instead of the result, you will start to be more in control over the current work you are doing, instead of delaying till the milestone is achieved. Here are some strategies to help you be more process focused:

Build Confidence

Start small with something you know you can achieve. Self-confidence is your perception of your ability; the more you do, the more you believe you can do. That will help you set loftier goals. If you can’t achieve what you set out to do, start with something easier.

Make a Commitment, Not a Promise

After a few weeks of working toward a goal, it can be easy to let yourself off the hook. A commitment is non-negotiable: when you get married, you commit to your partner; when you have to be at work between certain hours, you are committed to it. There is no “well, maybe I won’t be committed today because I don’t feel like it.” Cut off excuses the moment they start.

Be Specific to Create a Framework

For example, say: at this time, this many days a week, I will do x for this many minutes. Put it in your calendar so you see it regularly and have already allocated time. It’s harder to opt out of something scheduled.

Habit Stacking

It’s easier to stick to a habit when you add it on to an existing habit. Some examples would be flossing your teeth after you brush them or doing core work before your run.

Getting Off Track

You made a commitment with the best intentions but sometimes you make mistakes. Say you are trying to lose weight and swore off chips… and you “accidentally” eat a whole bag! One mistake doesn’t mean you have to start over. Simply pick up immediately where you left off in your process. Examine what triggered you to break your new habit so you can course-correct. To achieve your goal, you don’t have to be 100% perfect with your process but you do have to trend in the right direction. Practice self-compassion but don’t let yourself off the hook.

Is it Working?

Create a support network around you with like-minded individuals to help keep you accountable and motivated. Measure your progress by looking back at what you have accomplished each week instead of looking forward and seeing how far you have to go.

When you start focusing your attention and energy less on the results but rather on the processes or the techniques involved you discover that you learn faster, are more successful and even happier at the outcome. Altogether you gain more in life when you focus on the process rather than the results.

Obeya: The Lean War Room

Successful projects don’t just happen; they require hard work and collaboration from both project managers and team members to ensure all tasks are completed and goals are met, on time and on budget. However, many projects ultimately fail or are abandoned because the team does not work together to achieve shared goals. Much like how two people in a canoe won’t get anywhere if they’re rowing in opposite directions, projects will be doomed to fail if all members are not working towards the same end product.

To avoid this unfortunate fate, project managers can find help with visual management and the Obeya room. Visual Management is a Lean best practice used to inform and involve anyone in the process (even those who are unfamiliar with the details), and quickly allow them to see what is going on so that everyone ultimately understands what is under control and what is not. A key element of Visual Management is Obeya.

Toyota first created Obeya rooms during production of the Prius in the 1990s. Since then, organizations across many industries have put the concept into action. Obeya, which means “large room” in Japanese, involves bringing together departmental leaders to focus on big picture issues involved with a single project or initiative.

Creating an Obeya room is akin to creating a “war room,” a command center that draws together leaders from across departments in an organization. While most often associated with product development, Obeya also is useful as the command center for managing a new business strategy, software development, project management and workflow management. Obeya helps you to generate ideas, collaborate with management and stakeholders, and gain a full overview of the projects and any problems that need to be resolved.

An Obeya is not a process island. Simply putting all of your engineers in a single, big room does not an Obeya make. By the same token, a glass-walled room studded with monitors displaying and rotating real-time data every 30 seconds also doesn't qualify as an Obeya if it isn't used routinely to collaborate and manage the business. While the room may be visually eye-catching, that may be all it is.

The idea behind an Obeya is to break down the barriers that prevent employees from collaborating and sharing information to make efficient decisions. Obeyas are most effective when established and outfitted to solve singular problems or work on specific projects.

Obeya rooms are a process management tool that fuels creativity and collaboration between decision-makers on all levels while developing problem-solving skills. An Obeya promotes quicker, more nimble problem-solving by speeding up the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) process.

Here’s a breakdown of the PDCA cycle:

·        Plan: Define a problem and develop potential solutions.

·        Do: Implement a proposed solution.

·        Check: Evaluate the results to see whether a solution is working.

·        Act: Take one of two actions: return to the planning step if the results aren’t satisfactory, or standardize the solution if the results are sufficient.

Rather than communicating across departments over the course of days or weeks, an Obeya brings together key decision-makers to implement the PDCA cycle and develop solutions quickly.

One of the most essential components of a successful Obeya room is choosing what will be visually represented in the room. Obeya rooms rely on visual management to spur collaboration and it is important that only relevant and important information is posted in order to keep the focus. For instance, posting customer complaints will keep managers focused on meeting customer requirements and their satisfaction. Other information that can be used in an Obeya are A3 reports, KPI’s, and the results of previous projects. The documents posted in an Obeya room should be clear and easy to understand, set up in a logical manner. It should flow from one side to the other and tell a complete story.

Visibility of information, transparency that applies to all relevant information, and visual organization are important quality attributes. When you walk into a well-equipped Obeya with your team, you would like to have easy access to everything you need. Information should be clear so that there are no misunderstandings. Then you are adequately enabled to identify improvements, make decisions and take action.

But this is just the foundational layer. First and foremost, it’s about the people. Nothing happens with all that neatly collected information if there are no people around willing to commit to each other and use the given platform to take action in pursuit of process improvement.

The Obeya connects information to people and therefore people to each other. By applying a repeatable rhythm and fixed structure, people in the Obeya meet other experts in their own field. All that expertise is needed to realize the strategic intention of the organization. Team members evaluate the status of their work and assess whether they are on schedule. Barriers can be discussed. Managers assess where resources can be deployed and see, at a glance, what that could mean for other initiatives.

Accountability is further supported through frequent “daily” reviews, which highlight responsibilities involved in executing project tasks and apply more pressure on the implementation of corrective actions. For those looking to analyze and improve their project processes more, this also can be great place to begin your daily  Gemba walks.

Companies using an Obeya may enjoy a number of benefits. Those include:

·        Efficiency: A project’s leadership team can save time by bringing helpful visuals, necessary information, and vital resources together in one place

·        Focus: Having key team members in the same room for collaboration and discussion means that project leaders can focus on the right issues

·        Collaboration: An Obeya fosters an environment in which employees can work together across disciplines and in real-time, rather than via e-mail or in rushed meetings

For project managers struggling to establish teamwork, visibility and accountability on their projects, Obeya may be the solution. With the ultimate goal of breaking down walls between team members and getting everyone working on the same page together, Obeya rooms provide big gains in both collaboration and problem solving, two features that are essential in project management.