Here are some ‘not so healthy’ strategy diagnoses which may feel familiar:
DOA– Your strategy is Resting-In-Peace on a shelf, in a file morgue or buried in the minds of a few executives.
Terminal illness– Your strategy process does not anticipate the distraction of day-to-day pressures, noble concepts crashing into tactical challenges, market shifts and competitor dynamics.
Chronic Fatigue– Your leaders work crazy hard, marshalling their budgets and driving their people on department objectives, but fall, exhausted, short of your company’s goal line.
Anosognosia– Your leaders are in denial - pretending (‘strategy is fine’), embracing the status quo and/or blame game avoidance (culture issues, Board challenges, not enough time or resources, ‘if only that other department…,’ etc.).
Severe Indigestion– Everything is a priority. Dozens of projects get bucketed as top priorities. When a project is finally stopped as a statement of strategic prioritization, the work continues undercover.
CRC– ‘Change Resistant Culture’ attacks and debilitates even your best intended strategy. Common strains include: not invented here allergy; accountability deficit disorder; fear and anxiety contagion; and the cold wet blanket flu.
The vibrancy of your strategy is determined by how it is developed, exercised, stretched and nourished. While strategic planning may look out 1, 3, 5 or more years, the disciplines to make your strategy successful are more daily, monthly and quarterly. Here are a few keys to test and provide direction in strengthening your strategy and supporting leadership practices:
Wake up leadership in co-creation: Differentiating vision and strategy calls for disrupting the daily grind. Challenge yourselves with healthy conflict, deliberately divergent perspectives, deep dives, experiential scenarios, even some wild fun. By the time you have your strategy in hand, leadership understands and owns it, charging for relentless execution.
Embody and embolden the future state: Does your leadership team demonstrate the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors required to stand in and live the strategic vision? From this high ground, leaders shine strategy and ‘can do’ creativity into solutioning and daily decision making, inspiring others to find a way to leap forward.
Commit to strategic bets: Do you significantly invest time and resources in strategic priorities (over traditional allocations)? Ideally, this is demonstrated in the budget process and on-going decision making, where your team is actively looking for opportunities to reallocate ’their’ budget and time to pursue 'your' shared strategy.
Look ahead for road signs: Do you have metrics and tracking to keep strategy vital over time? Include ‘Leading Indicators’ to provide early feedback for proactive recovery/optimization, as well as a process for sensing changes in conditions that trigger a strategy milestone decision or ‘breaking glass’ on a ready-to-go contingency plan.
Design organization to deliver: Do your organization structures and capabilities enable and reinforce strategy execution and principles? For example: regular leadership team time to assesses, reinforce and course correct strategy; individual and team performance management of strategy initiatives and enabling behaviors; up-down-across reporting lines/linkages that accelerate strategy aligned resource allocation, collaboration and decision making.
Are there opportunities to strengthen your strategic health? What areas will make the most difference in your current situation? Who do you need support from to be successful?
What one or two actions will you take now to get moving?