Often organisations spend valuable time and money on reviewing their problems, then another review and another, the cycle goes on identifying the same problems year on year. Sometimes from those problems identified, effort is spent developing Strategic Plans to improve. Those Strategic Plans are then given down to team leads to implement and then team leads to individuals. It may sound like a logical step, define a plan, put the activity on the responsible person’s yearly performance plan and then we expect the gap is closed and the objective achieved.
So why do we never seem to achieve the improvement or alignment identified in the Strategic Plan? Often we leave the strategic objective at a senior level, a broad statement, with no or low effort put towards translating aligned actions to individual departments, or more importantly, to individuals with lower level enabling tasks.
Without clear mapping of the high level objective, to the department, then on to the individual, there is usually no understanding or value placed on how the low level task enables the high level strategic objective. As you are starting to understand, many low level tasks, across multiple teams, will achieve a strategic objective. So, if no mapping occurs, then no value is given, and likely the low level task are excluded, forgotten or immediate tasks are prioritised instead.
You’ll frequently find that most organisations will have a business process at some level of maturity, and usually the management level processes aren’t mapped. It is fundamental that the organisation outline the departments boundaries and set the pathway from strategy to execution from a process management perspective. This gap is usually the key to defining how we translate the strategic objective to execution. It begins by:
- Determining the organisation’s strategic direction, and;
- Documenting the highest levels of the business process, then;
- Clearly define and map the links from strategy to the shop floor, and;
- Ensure the understanding of each task's value and how it will enable the strategic objective.
- Display and manage the completion of the tasks, and manage the exceptions.
- Reward the people staying the course, manage the others.
It sounds simple, but many teams will be buried well in their individual silos and won’t see the forest for the trees. It may make sense to have an independent party facilitate the planning and mapping process to ensure all tasks aren't competing and they continue to align to the strategic plan.
Such an undertaking may appear quite daunting at first. It is complex to map strategic objectives to the shop floor, across multiple teams, while ensuring an understanding of the intent and value of each task and how one enables another. Thoughtful preparation and careful execution of well-defined work packages will make the strategic objectives eminently achievable.
Written by Jason Plath
