What is Strategy Implementation?
Strategy implementation is the process of ensuring that a strategic plan is carried out. In other words, it is doing what you said you would do when you planned the strategy! And, given that 9 out of 10 organisations fail to execute their strategy, proper implementation is critical!
Our strategy implementation process includes six steps that ensure your strategy transitions from a static, inactive plan to a living, evolving implementation. To gain a better understanding of strategic implementation, read our article on factors affecting strategy implementation.
The Strategy Implementation Process in 6 steps
- Define your strategy framework
- Build your plan
- Define KPIs
- Establish your strategy rhythm
- Implement strategy reporting
- Link performance to strategy
Follow our 6 step process guide to strategy implementation below to ensure your strategy evolves from a plan to strategic implementation.
Step #1: Define your strategy framework
Strategy is something that should be ingrained in everything you do.
It should be ingrained in the organization’s and its employees’ DNA. However, if you don’t make an effort to call it out explicitly, you won’t get the attention or traction you require.
As a result, you must begin with a simple framework that introduces a strategy lexicon that everyone can understand and support. When someone asks, “How are our strategic objectives coming along?” everyone should be on the same page about what that means.
We walk you through this approach in our How to Write a Strategic Plan Guide, which also includes a free template you can use to get started on developing your strategy.
It gives you a clear way to talk about strategy implementation and avoids using unnecessary jargon.
We purposefully included only a vision statement rather than the more popular “vision and mission” combination because we discovered that people struggle to understand the distinction between the two.
We don’t want any confusion when it comes to strategy implementation, so we only included a vision statement.
Consider using a strategy framework, such as the Balanced Scorecard or McKinsey’s Strategic Horizons, to add depth to your strategy. Read this guide to determine which framework is best for you.
Whichever framework you choose, though, be sure to keep things as simple as possible. (All of the frameworks in our guide pass this test with flying colors!).
Step #2: Build your plan
The next step of our strategy implementation process is where you will start creating your plan.
Now that you’ve established your framework(s), you’re ready to begin developing your strategic plan. We’ve created a detailed guide on how to write a strategic plan, so we won’t go over it again here.
But assuming you’re using a framework similar to the one above, here’s how we’d suggest approaching the creation of your plan:
The 7 Steps to build your strategic implementation plan
1. Gather the organization’s leaders (founders, CEO, directors, etc.) to agree on your vision. You could do this in a single workshop, but you should keep them engaged with it on a regular basis. Have them read this article to keep everyone on the same page.
2. Begin writing down the organization’s values at the same workshop. They’re critical for your company’s culture, so read this post to make the process go more smoothly.
3. Finally (same workshop still), write down 3 or 4 Strategic Focus Areas the team thinks they need to be addressed in order to reach the vision.
4. Pause. Don’t be tempted to move on to creating strategic objectives just yet.
5. Take your basic framework back to your team(s) and have them independently input ideas for strategic objectives under each Focus Area.
You might want to assign one Focus Area to each member of your leadership team and have them lead the charge for getting that Focus Area fleshed out. This is a great way to ensure buy-in to the final product of your strategic plan.
6. Once you’ve fleshed out the strategic objectives, get back together as a group and ask yourself a series of hard questions:
- If we deliver each of these strategic objectives under a given Focus Area, will we have nailed that Focus Area?
- If we deliver all of our Focus Areas, will we reach our vision?
- Will our values help or hinder us along the way?
7. If you’re green across the board, it’s time to go ahead and launch your strategic plan
Skip Projects and KPIs (for now)
You may have noticed that we haven’t yet discussed the bottom layer of our strategy house: projects and KPIs.
This is because a component of the strategy implementation process should include empowering people throughout the organisation to develop their own projects.
With a solid foundation in place, the risks of the process are greatly reduced, allowing you to gain momentum and buy into your strategic plan.
Step #3: Define KPIs
You need a way to measure progress towards your strategic objectives.
In other words, step 3 of our process guide to strategy implementation is to define your KPIs.
Key performance indicators are one of the oldest management tools around. And for a good reason – they work. They keep you honest about your progress and focused on your outcomes.
They need to become your beacons for implementing strategy. Here are a few tips when it comes to coming up with your own:
- Keep them simple. Don’t try to come up with complex ratios that only a small group of people understand. Make them simple and relatable to everyone in the organization.
- Choose at least 1 KPI for each of your strategic objectives. More than one is fine – but keep the total number for the organization to no more than 6 or 7.
- Make it easy to measure them quickly. We’ve seen great-looking KPIs that can only start to be measured years after the strategy begins. That simply isn’t going to work for keeping your strategy implementation efforts focused in the early days.
- Don’t make them all about the $$$. Sure, profit and revenue might be your end-game, but KPIs should be the drivers of those things – measuring the outcomes alone adds little value.
Here are our focus areas and the KPIs we use for each:
We can do a bit better for our KPIs in the “Industry” and “People” space. But overall, these KPIs have been a huge part of helping us implement our strategy.
One final point: You need to update the progress of your KPIs at least once per month, or you risk quickly losing focus on them. Spend the time now as part of your strategic planning process to figure out how to access the stats and data you need.
Step #4: Deal with business-as-usual
Step 4 of our process guide to strategy implementation is where you overcome business-as-usual.
The irony of strategy implementation is that everyone recognises its importance, but it is frequently the first thing to be forgotten when things get tough.
People become so preoccupied with the day-to-day that they don’t have time to consider the big picture issues that will keep the organisation moving forwards. One of the most common reasons strategies fail is that they quickly become self-fulfilling.
How you deal with BAU
- Meet often to discuss progress- We’d suggest a minimum of quarterly reviews for higher level objectives, but monthly would be a great place to start off until things get bedded in.
- Determine the attendees- You’ll need the leadership team at a minimum – but you also need to involve the rest of the organization. The more they engage with the overall strategy, the stronger the ownership they feel.
- Be conscious of time- Specify the end time and always respect it. Allocate the last 10 minutes (or as many as you need) to “next steps”. Reviewing progress without the next steps is meaningless.
Define the meeting structure beforehand- What metrics will you discuss? For how long? Which reports will be used? More on this in step #5 below
How to adapt your strategy fast and align your people with it
Regular discussions on progress can only get you so far, without the right mentality and tools.
Be decisive and go all in. There is no such thing as a perfect plan, so don’t get too attached to it. When opportunities or mistakes are identified during your review meetings, take decisive action.
Change is not only natural but necessary to learn and adapt at light speed to the market’s conditions.
Good strategies guide decision-making. Frame your strategy as choices. The company’s direction must be clear enough that it educates your people’s decisions when they reach a crossroad.
And they reach crossroads multiple times per day.
Get rid of static tools. The truth is, without a dynamic tool, the process of refining your strategy faces tremendous friction.
That costs time, peace of mind, and, ultimately, money. Performance Cultivation eliminates friction at all stages of strategy refinement, from planning to reporting and even alignment.
Step #5: Implement consistent & simple strategy reports
Step 5 of our process guide to strategy implementation focuses on reporting.
Now that your meetings are in place, you’ll want to choose a consistent way of reporting the progress of your strategy implementation. The main objectives of this report should be:
Consistency
Everyone knows what to expect and what they need to update prior to the meeting(s).
Simplicity
The report should give an at-a-glance view of how the strategy is progressing.
Accountability
Ensure that the report includes the names of the owner of each goal (accountability), as well as the names of the people actually getting things done (recognition).
Conclusions
Your next steps. The report needs to include not only an overview of how the strategy looks now but how it’s progressing over time. Try to include a comparison period or graphs/charts that show progress over time to ensure momentum is maintained.
Step #6: Strategy implementation in strategic management
Linking performance reviews to strategy, the first five steps of our process guide to strategy implementation are the absolute basics to ensure that you have success implementing and executing your strategy.
But organizations who truly succeed are those who manage to weave strategy implementation into the fabric of their existence. An easy way to get started with this is to create a formal link between strategic management and performance reviews.
Nothing shows people how important strategy is more than when it impacts their reviews and potentially even their reward and remuneration. There are a few ways that you can do this.
First, invest in a strategic management system that has these performance review links built into its HR processes.
But even if you’re doing performance reviews the old-fashioned way, you can still make a point of awarding specific credit to employees who embrace strategy execution in their role and can clearly demonstrate how they’ve contributed.
Second, encourage your managers to talk to people about strategy on a regular basis. Consider creating a 1:1 template that managers can use which highlights how a person’s goals contribute to the strategy.
Finally, expose your strategy to your people. If you only present your strategy in PowerPoint, people won’t remember them.
Help your people align with the plan by having them access it at will.
Working your way through our 6 step process guide to strategy implementation isn’t something you’ll be able to do overnight. It will take a good few weeks and probably a few iterations. But don’t let that be an excuse not to start.
We can assure you that when our clients follow the aforementioned process, their strategy implementation plan succeeds far more often than it fails. This is an important aspect of strategic management that should not be overlooked.
