In our SAPM courses at Stanford and client companies around the world, we use many examples from IDEO. Tim Brown and IDEO Founder David Kelley have used the term Design Thinking to describe how they approach challenges and their work.  See June 2008 Harvard Business Article on Design Thinking by Tim Brown.  Design Thinking also underlies the Stanford d.school. Brown notes that a design thinker shows empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, willingness to experiment, and collaboration.  All of which are critical for designing the execution of strategy via project-based work (PBW).  Here are some initial thoughts on the elements of Strategy Execution Thinking – we welcome your comments and suggestions on these.

Elements of Strategy Execution Thinking:

• Strategy is executed via:
  • project-based work (PBW) that delivers new or upgraded products, new or upgraded business processes, and new or improved business facilities and systems.
  • operations that use the results of PBW to deliver the products and services the organization offers
• PBW and operations are conducted within a variety of contexts:
  • overall business
  • organization / business unit
  • projects
  • teams
  • personal

• ---

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  Understanding the culture in which PBW and operations are conducted and acting on that knowledge accelerates strategy execution
  • functional
  • ethnic
  • national
  • organizational
    
• Who / what the organization is – its purpose, vision, how it sees itself – always drives successful execution: the questions is whether this is by design or by default
• Collaboration riles: It’s not about me but us – we is smarter than me.
• Clear understanding of 1) what done looks like and 2) how to measure “levels of doneness” supports the execution of strategy via PBW
• …what would you add?