A recent Harvard Business School blog outlined key flaws in strategic planning.

1. Skipping rigorous analysis
2. Believing strategy can be built in a day
3. Failing to link strategic planning with strategic execution
4. Dodging strategy review meetings

#3 is the heart of the Strategic Execution Framework we use for training, consulting, and workshop design.   Working with clients over the years this is one of the key challenges all organizations make and are not always fully aware of.  Specific actions (which are part of the IPS Strategy Execution Mapping Workshop) to address weak or missing linkages include:

• create a clear, concise understanding or what the strategy is
• have a rigorous, understood-by-all definition of the organization for which the strategy is being executed (e.g.,use is/is not matrices for this).  This may be an entire organization or a business unit.
• determine the customer clusters for that organization, both internal and external.  Being absolutely clear about the customers that are the focus of the strategy is critical
• understand the culture and structure of the organization in which that strategy needs to be executed
• plan the project-based work (PBW) required to execute the strategy given the customers, the culture, the and the organizational structure
• map the PBW against specific strategies and the associated organizational competencies
• EVERY project and EVERY operation should be  linked with the specific strategies and customers they support
• look for missing work, duplicate work, or work that does not align and/or fully support the organization’s strategy

The Global Business Network pioneered the use of scenario planning and is now part of The Monitor Group.  Former GBN President, Eamonn Kelly, offers some insights for Mastering the Moment:

• develop a superior contextual understanding of the structural dynamics reshaping the global economy, how they impact your industry, and the new opportunities
  APPLICATION→review large programs and projects; are they still fully aligned with strategies needed in these times?  are you actively looking for the opportunities?
  
• superior competitive strategy
  APPLICATION→ do your largest programs and projects position the organization well relative to competitors (both current and new ones)?  Are new programs needed to enhance your competitive position in the current competitive climate?
  
• winners will have superior choice-framing and decision-making capabilities
  APPLICATION→ are the portfolio decisions in your organization make with a clear understanding of the choices?  are your major programs increasing or decreasing the range of choices the organization will have the future? Look for those portfolio investments that expand the set of choices in the future,m given the high level of uncertainty present.

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

• ---

  ---

  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?

The 2009 version of the IPS SAPM Strategic Execution Framework (SEF) White Paper has been released. The SEF was developed by IPS and Stanford as a framework for addressing the challenges of executing strategy via project-based work (PBW). The SEF underlies all the courses and consulting conducted by IPS.

PBW encompasses a wide range of activities including projects, programs, portfolios of PBW, project-like initiatives, and other work that has characteristics associated with projects. PBW essentially comprises all of an organization’s work that is not operations. We use PBW because many organizations have a variety of terminology and nomenclature to describe what might be called “projects.”

All activities in an organization are either operations (the on-going running of the business) or PBW. The execution of any strategy requires PBW. Consequently, the SEF focuses on those aspects of an organization that ultimately influence and drive PBW which in turn enables the execution of strategy. The framework includes the following domains:

• Ideation (organizational purpose, identity, and long-range intention)
• Nature (an organization’s culture, structure, and strategy)
• Vision (goals, metrics, and strategy)
• Engagement (relationship between strategy and portfolio)
• Synthesis (portfolios, programs, and projects)
• Transition (programs and projects and the critical hand-off to operations)

Each of these domains are discussed in detail in the white paper. The white paper is free to all registered users of the COE.

Download the White Paper