Strategy execution is about getting other people, and yourself, to do things – the right things. And that doesn’t happen in the typical, annual strategic planning ritual where people throw around some ideas and then check in a year later.
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Any serious strategist must ask, “How will we know when we’ve succeeded?” Strategies have intended outcomes – goals – and it’s terribly helpful if those outcomes are clear enough that success or failure will be indisputable.
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An introduction: We like Mike Kipp, and we’ve never met him. Over time, we’ve come to admire this fellow blogger’s ideas on strategy – and we’re a bit picky on that topic. (He also has some pretty interesting perspectives on health care, which is his main focus.
Big organizations breed cross-functional initiatives like overripe bananas breed fruit flies. And that’s a good thing because when these initiatives work, they propel an organization forward. That’s because they draw from different parts of the organization, with different expertise, and different interests at stake, and then focus on solving a single, important problem.
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Strategic plans almost always assume certain things to be true about the future. For example, when one company plans to acquire another, its leaders may assume they can achieve synergies to drive down costs. They might assume they are buying their way into a high-growth market or blocking a competitor’s moves.
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Why do some bureaucracies succeed while many others fail? There are endless explanations for this, and we will add one more: slow courage.
We’re not talking about the kind of heroism displayed in 1987 by U.S. sailor Wayne Weaver who escaped a fierce on-board fire only to turn around and go back for his buddies -- three times.
When the Big Strategic Idea someone pitches you is blatantly boneheaded and un-strategic, you might remind yourself that strategic thinkers are made, not born. If this person is your friend or subordinate, then maybe it’s your job to help them learn the skill called “strategic thinking.
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In our business, we see a lot of strategic plans. In too many of them we see this cute little two-step trick we call, “The Wimp’s Way Out”:
Step one: First, declare bland, no fail, effort-based goals.
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Fancy decision making models abound in business, but they are not what leaders use day-to-day, meeting-to-meeting. Decision making in that environment is based on human judgment. Not surprisingly, good judgment equals good decision making and bad judgment equals bad decision making.
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There are plenty of theories on change management, and this isn’t one of them. This is a simple checklist for anyone driving big, complex organizational change.
But first, you have to recognize when you are facing what we’ll call “Big Change.
