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We have been talking about business strategy, and
specifically, we've been focusing on strategy formulation and implementation.
Now, as you get ready to move towards strategy execution,
as you're really getting ready to take action,
there's a number of questions that are important for you to ask.
And I'm going to start with this first one, which is very fundamental, and
it's simply, do we understand our strategy?
Now, that seems sort of crazy, right?
I mean, all organizations should understand their strategy.
But you would be surprised at how many organizations do not really,
fundamentally understand what their strategy is.
It's easy to just keep doing the same things we've been doing,
try to beat the competition, but this is a question that's really about clarity.
Does the organization have a clear goal?
Does it have a clear plan?
Is there clarity around the sort of strategic purpose of the organization and
what the business model is to execute on that purpose?
You might think about this as sort of if I cherry-picked someone from deep
within the organization, and asked them to explain the organization's strategy,
would they be able to do it?
And in lots of organizations, unfortunately, the answer is no.
So effective organizations have some clarity around what the strategy is,
from the top of the organization clear down to the bottom.
So that's the first question that I encourage you to ask.
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A second question might be, do we have the right strategy?
So we might have clarity to the first question,
we might have clarity about what our strategy is, but is it the right one?
And how do we know?
So here's where I encourage you to, again,
make sure you're doing a thorough analysis, that you understand
all of the competitive dynamics in your market segment or industry, that you
understand what your organizational capabilities are, that you understand
who your stakeholders are and what value they want you to create for them.
And you've got to put all that together to really understand whether the strategy you
have is the best one that you could have, right?
So again, a key question.
The next question might be, how was our strategy created?
Now, this is an important one as well.
Was it a fair and open process in the organization to create that strategy,
or, in contrast, was it just something that was handed from down from on high?
Well, effective organizations really think carefully about how to get buy-in from
all the organizational members throughout the company on that organization strategy.
So was the process fair and open?
Did we involve a number of stakeholders that could provide input
into the formulation of that strategy?
Have we taken account of the behavioral influences that might be important to
consider, given what our business model is and what it is we want to accomplish?
So this is a key question as well.
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It's important to ask another question involving
the alignment of the organization.
And specifically, does our governance, do the structure and
processes of organizational governance, do they support the strategy's execution?
In other words, we know what we want to do strategically.
Do we know what we can do?
And is there an alignment between what we're able to do effectively and
easily as an organization?
And does that line up well with what our strategic objectives are?
So here's where we have to think carefully about structure, and processes, and
governance.
And do we have sort of what it takes in the bones
of the organization to really execute on what we want to do?
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Finally, you should ask if you have a plan to begin implementation.
So this is where you need to think about are there milestones,
how are we going to assess the performance on executing on this strategy, right?
Is this a priority throughout the organization?
Oftentimes, strategic initiatives in companies might just be the brainchild of
a few particular executives, and it seems like the sort of flavor of the week.
But if we really want to be effective at implementing strategy,
at executing on that strategy, we need to ask ourselves, how important is this?
Have we made this a priority?
Does that show up in the budget numbers and in the sort of directions that
all of the divisions of the company are receiving, and that sort of thing?
So here, we need to sort of think about all of the things that will be
required to execute on that strategy,
five key questions to ask as you begin strategy execution.
Michael LenoxSenior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer
Jared HarrisSamuel L. Slover Research Chair in Business Administration
Scott SnellE. Thayer Bigelow Research Professor in Business Administration
