Strategy Execution
Strategy execution is simple. Its just not easy.
Our approach to making things happen at any scale is founded on a single principle born of decades of experience. Transform the culture and the teams will transformation the business. Culture change requires adjustments of reward and risk calculations, the basis of any situational behavior, across a number of actors. So the conditions that they are expressions of must be recast to affect a desired shift in calculation. The fastest way to do so is to make it a do-or-die mission for the stakeholders. Burn the boats.
We found that projects are opportunities to achieve these results at a manageable scale.
We think of basketball as another and less severe metaphor, with a project equating to a game or a series of games. We are fans of triangle offense, even though its not used today in NBA as much as it once was. The beauty of it is still influencing how we execute on strategies.
Firstly, everyone touches the ball. This rule forces game awareness, self-awareness, situation awareness, skill development, and cognitive flexibility generally. It requires collaboration and singular focus, generating group ownership. It rewards members for going together rather than breaking out as the fastest (though that is allowed when the opportunity arises).
Secondly, when done properly in a game, it is too fast to be coached real-time. It depends heavily on speed of reading the defense and adjusting to it and constant communication among the players. It must be managed from the court by the team at the time to be optimal.
Thirdly, the approach is built on discipline and trust more than skill. It matures the members into a team faster and on sounder footings that are apparent to the team itself. They have earned a stake it the team and their outcomes through their own efforts to deliver something bigger than any one member on it. That’s priceless and marketable.
Our advice therefore is refrain from cutting resources to come under budget as well as surging resources to execute sooner. Rather, take a modest amount of time up front to advise, educate and equip your team suitably for the task. Provide poignant and effective leadership to team members that compels them to not just do better as individuals, but also how to leverage their individual strengths to team up as they see fit to the tasks. Then so long as is necessary, clear obstacles preventing them from going faster together.
This approach to strategy execution accomplishes tactical and strategic benefits. It delivers the project with urgency and care that only team ownership can achieve. Redeployment of the team members to new posts and projects propagates these proven practices throughout the organization. This in of itself makes the environment conducive to imitators, as is natural, and desirable. Behold, favorable culture change as a by-product of successful strategy execution!
We would like to help you deliver your strategy. Allow us to help you cultivate the teams that will delivery on your strategy.