10 Principles of Strategy through Execution
How to link where your company is headed with what it does
best. See also “A Guide to Strategy through Execution.”
by Ivan de Souza, Richard Kauffeld, and David van Oss
Superb article that should be read in full to gain important
insights and examples
Having a close link between strategy and execution is
critically important. Your strategy is your promise to deliver value: the
things you do for customers, now and in the future, that no other company can
do as well. Your execution occurs in the thousands of decisions made each day
by people at every level of your company.
Quality, innovation, profitability, and growth all depend on
having strategy and execution fit together seamlessly. If they don’t fit — if
you can’t deliberately align them in a coherent way — you risk operating at
cross-purposes and losing your focus.
1. Aim High
Don’t compromise your strategy or your execution. Set a
lofty ambition for your strategy: not just financial success but sustained
value creation, making a better world through your products, services, and
presence
2. Build on Your
Strengths
Your company has capabilities that set it apart, things you
do better than anyone else. You can use them as a starting point to create
greater success.
3. Be Ambidextrous
(a bit different than the definition we use in MDG)
In the physical world, ambidexterity is the ability to use
both hands with equal skill and versatility. In business, it’s the ability to
manage strategy and execution with equal competence. In some companies, this is
known as being “bilingual”: able to speak the language of the boardroom and the
shop floor or software center with equal facility. Ambidextrous managers can
think about the technical and operational details of a project in depth and
then, without missing a beat, can consider its broader ramifications for the
industry.
4. Clarify Everyone’s
Strategic Role
The people in your day-to-day operations — wherever they
are, and on whatever level — are continually called upon to make decisions on
behalf of the enterprise. If they are not motivated to deliver the strategy,
the strategy won’t reach the customers
5. Align Structures
to Strategy
Set up all your organizational structures, including your
hierarchical design, decision rights, incentives, and metrics, so they
reinforce your company’s identity: your value proposition and critical
capabilities
6. Transcend
Functional Barrier
Unfortunately, many companies unintentionally diminish their
capabilities by allowing functions to operate independently. It’s often easier
for the functional leaders to focus on specialized excellence, on “doing my job
better” rather than on “what we can accomplish together.”
7. Become a Fully
Digital Enterprise (This is clearly the future. For those Horizon 3
Decision Criteria, I believe this should be included almost as a given—not an
option)
The seventh principle should affect every technological
investment you make — and with luck, it will prevent you from making some
outdated ones. Embrace digital technology’s potential to transform your
company: to create fundamentally new experiences and interactions for your
customers, your employees, and every other constituent.
8. Keep It Simple,
Sometimes
Many company leaders wish for more simplicity: just a few
products, a clear and simple value chain, and not too many projects on the
schedule. Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way. In a large, mainstream
company, execution is by nature complex.
9. Shape Your Value
Chain
No company is an island. Every business relies on other
companies in its network to help shepherd its products and services from one
end of the value chain to the other. As you raise your game, you will raise the
game of other operations you work with, including suppliers, distributors,
retailers, brokers, and even regulators.
10. Cultivate
Collective Mastery
The more bound your company is by internal rules and
procedures for making and approving decisions, the slower it becomes. Hence the
frustration leaders have with the pace of bureaucracy, in which people can’t
make decisions because they don’t know what the strategic priorities are — or
even what other stakeholders will think. In a world where disruption has become
prevalent, your company can’t afford the time or expense of operating this way.
The alternative is what we call collective mastery. This is
a cultural attribute, often found in companies where strategy through execution
is prevalent. It is the state you reach when communication is fluid, open, and
constant. Your strategists understand what will work or not work because they
talk easily with functional specialists. Your functional specialists know not
only what they’re supposed to do, but why it matters. Everyone moves quickly
and decisively, because they have the ingrained judgment to know who to
consult, and when. People trust one another to make decisions on behalf of the
whole.
