Business strategy
development and execution

Tools and processes for business strategy development

Many organizations use tools and processes to develop strategy and how it filters down into the organization, including the choices for which business initiatives and projects to invest in.

There are challenges; to highlight these, consider the commonly used tool, Balanced Scorecard.

In the 2000’s and onward, Balanced Scorecard has been viewed as a reasonable approach to ‘get focus’ on identifying strategic goals, while on the short side it is weak on execution. Specific critiques have pointed to:

• the lack of clear processes to establish strategy statements
• unquantified KPIs
• failure to provide a direct link between project deliverables to the strategy itself

The TOP value delivery approach, processes and tools address the above challenges in an intuitive and logical manner.

Developing a strategy and transforming it into executable strategic business outcomes is the cornerstone for achieving your strategic goals. We help make this happen using the same TOP principles that are used for actioning your business initiatives and projects. This brings a consistent mindset for business value delivery throughout an organization.

Each strategic outcome that you define is measurable and describes your strategic goal in a business end-state when that goal is achieved.  In principle, each statement covers:

• Who will being doing what
• How it will be achieved
• What is the scope
• And what is the payoff (the measure of success)

Example:

“We have exited the US market by selling our US business, including the required product support services, and no longer have any obligations or commitments to this market so that we avoid the current losses”

The success criteria for the above example is measurable via a simple ‘yes or no’ question: “Have we, or haven’t we?”  In TOP, meaningful measurability is a key principle found in all processes.

TOP processes, tools and models are teachable, learnable and repeatable.

We can:

• Advise and train on transforming strategy goals into strategic outcomes (workshops, for example)
• Advise and train on the set-up whereby your strategic outcomes link directly to business initiatives and projects
• Advise and train on constructing value delivery governance roles and responsibilities (see Project Governance for more on this)

And if you don’t see what you are looking for, ask us.  We speak your language.

Additional background - Operationalizing strategy delivery

Strategy, or business strategy, is the driver of change and improvement.  In practice, there is often a dis-connect between strategy and the business initiatives that are invested in, resulting in a compromised strategy delivery.

Using TOP processes and principles, strategy goals are transformed into strategic outcomes that ‘operationalize’ strategy delivery.  Stating your strategy in measurable, business oriented statements gives transparent visibility on what is targeted and provides the organization with an intuitive understanding of what a successful delivery looks like. 

Once your strategic outcomes are in place, we establish roadmaps for each of them consisting of the Desired Business Outcomes that will deliver the individual strategic initiatives.  These roadmaps demonstrate the most efficient execution of your strategic goals, and enable you to calculate well founded, high level ‘Benefit-Cost Analysis’ that are the basis for determining the business value you’re getting and what it costs. 

Once the strategy is validated and approved, you then:

• Use the associated Desired Business Outcomes as the foundation for delivering a specific strategic goal
• When complexity comes into the play, the Desired Business Outcomes for a specific strategic goal are used to define business driven projects and/or programs to deliver that strategy initiative. Each project is linked directly to the component(s) of the strategy it is associated with via the same processes and value delivery approach used to create the strategic outcomes:
  • Define the desired business outcomes for the specific project
  • Establish an Outcomes Dependency Roadmap for efficient delivery
  • Identify and quantify the benefits for tracking and management during project execution
  • Identify the change activities needed to deliver each outcome (which provides the data to project the cost of delivery)

Identifying and quantifying benefits for an individual project provides transparency and alignment on that project’s actual contribution to the strategy it supports. KPIs are the result of crafted projections, not random or well-intended targets. The direct link between project and strategy is established, and can be tracked and managed during a project’s execution.

Optimized Strategy Execution, in short:

1. Validate the value and ‘do-ability’s of your strategy – can you/should you do it?
   
   
2. Establish the measures of success – the strategic outcomes and financials – in clear, specific, measurable terms
   
   
3. Then, at the project/program investment level define the desired business outcomes each delivery project will deliver – again in clear, specific, measurable terms
   
   
4. Measure and track the strategic contribution of each project investment – so you know which strategic imperatives are being delivered and by which projects
   
   
5. Action the projects – focused on delivering the business outcomes and benefits that deliver the strategic outcomes
   
   
6. Measure and track project progress – are you on track and still likely to realize the expected strategic outcomes?
   
   
7. Measure and track the business contribution of each project – the business outcomes, benefits and value delivered – have they been delivered as planned?
   
   
8. Measure the overall results and returns on investment – did you achieve the outcomes and financial results you desired/needed?

Our advisory and collaborative role is to facilitate and guide you (and your team) to create precise and transparent business strategy outcomes that are the driver for advancing your organization. This can be done 'one-on-one' or in a workshop format.

The process is learnable, teachable and repeatable; moving forward, you can use it to define and update your strategy independently.

If there is an interest in training, we provide that.

It all plays into what we do: Making strategy measurable and optimizing strategy delivery.

If you're interested in hearing more about our approach to strategy development and execution and how we are able to assist you, give us a call or email us using the form below.