My guess is that your answer is less than half or at least “not enough of them.” Delivering on strategic company initiatives on time, every time, is the hallmark of organizations that are best in the world at executing strategy, and they’re rewarded with a premium put on the value of their company.
Organizations that can’t deliver on their strategic initiatives fail at executing their strategy, and organizations that fail at executing strategy will not survive. It is just that simple. Improving how your organization delivers strategic initiatives increases your ability to execute strategy and, therefore, should be one of your organization’s top business imperatives.
Defining Strategic Actions
Strategic initiatives are those high-priority actions taken by organizations to close the gap between their current performance and their future vision. These critically important initiatives generally meet the following criteria:
Companies spend billions every year on strategic initiatives that meet these criteria with less-than-impressive results. More than half of these are abandoned when failure appears to be inevitable. Only 4 in 10 add value beyond the investment made and the ROI on strategic initiative portfolios (the collection of strategic actions) typically delivers 60% less than originally expected.
Strategic Action Mindsets
Why? We believe it is because many organizations approach the planning and implementation of these strategic initiatives with a “field of dreams” mindset: “Build it, and they will come.” This way of thinking drives an approach that is focused on building and installing the right solution followed by a belief¾a leap of faith¾that people and results will naturally follow. While that might work in Hollywood, I doubt you would want to bet your company’s future on it.
Organizations that consistently deliver strategic initiatives and successfully execute strategies demonstrate a “strategic intent” mindset that drives an approach that is very different. A strategic intent mindset drives planning and implementation with a relentless focus on defining victory and achieving strategic outcomes. This results-orientation leads to investing time at the beginning of every strategic initiative to be clear on intent in definable and measurable terms. This, in turn, drives an approach to planning, managing, and implementing strategic initiatives that is not just focused on installing a solution, but also on what is required to realize the full intent behind the solution. This approach delivers strategic actions that produce a breakthrough, sustainable results.
Strategic Action Delivery
So what is the mindset applied to manage strategic initiatives in your organization? Below we have provided a quick diagnostic to help you answer that question. We have organized a series of statements based on N2Growth’s four pillars of strategic action delivery. These are stated in the opposite direction desired to clearly illustrate the difference between the two mindsets discussed above.
I suspect your results from this quick diagnostic have identified that your organization has a little of both mindsets when it comes to managing strategic initiatives. The key to success is making a conscious choice to adopt the strategic intent mindset and then to identify which of the four pillars of strategic action delivery where you can begin to make improvements. Whether your organization is facing the implementation of one major strategic initiative or a portfolio of them designed to achieve your business strategy, you can dramatically increase your success by adopting the right mindset and focusing on the four pillars of strategic action delivery.
This website uses cookies.