Strategy execution a hot topic at Strategy Leaders Forum in Dubai

Last week QPR and QPR’s Strategic VAR in the Middle-East region IYCON sponsored Strategy Leaders Forum that took place on 13-17 of April 2014 in Dubai. 

 Dr. Robert Kaplan with the team from QPR and IYCON

 

One of the highlights of the Forum was Dr. Robert Kaplan’s (co-creator of balanced scorecard methodology) Master class session on strategy execution. Dr. Kaplan started his presentation by emphasizing the importance of leading change as part of strategy execution and pointed out that in today’s dynamic environment business leaders should always be prepared for change - even if business is currently running smoothly. To ensure business success also in the future, companies should proactively look for strategic level change. He brilliantly brought home the message by quoting the legendary former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch: “Change before you have to”.

Another interesting topic of the Master Class was a thorough and pragmatic presentation of Kaplan-Norton six stage management system for strategy execution. It is a comprehensive tool for strategy execution that creates a link between strategy and operations. Dr. Kaplan then ended his session by bringing in risk management and talking about the significance of integrating it into the Strategy execution process.

Overall, as a company that develops software tools that support organizations in strategy execution and in strategic level change, is was great to listen to his message. QPR’s offering gives means not only to plan and monitor strategic change but also manage risk, in addition to fully supporting the framework developed by Kaplan & Norton. So we can really help organizations who are looking for management system for strategy execution, and it was great to see that our comprehensive approach was validated by Dr. Kaplan who is a leading authority in this field. The event included also many other excellent presentations and we’re proud to mention that the presented case studies also included a couple of QPR customers.

And as usual, the discussions outside of the presentation rooms proved to be interesting. One of the key findings was that organizations DO regard strategy planning and execution as an essential ingredient for a company’s success, and most companies have established a dedicated organizational function, Strategy Management Office, to manage strategy planning and execution. Furthermore, many organizations also seek for software tools to automate the strategy execution process and to improve communication and collaboration around strategy execution.

It seems that the above approach has brought companies great results in the Middle-East.

So, as a take away from the event we can say that successful strategy execution requires real dedication and commitment from the organization, and the right framework with right tools. 

Tero Aspinen

Director, Partner Management

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