It used to be 90. Then, 70. A year
ago, it was established at 44. While this is not the answer to the Ultimate
Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, it’s still an important one: What percentage of
business strategies fail?
A multitude of reasons and factors
explain why strategies or transformational initiatives fail. For example, a
long time ago Dr. Kotter found that shortcomings in defining and
communicating a compelling vision, and mobilizing around the planning and
implementation result in failure. More recently, Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Norton
in their book Execution Premium, found that roughly 2/3 fail because a
formal strategy execution process is missing. An Economist
Intelligence Unit & PMI report from 2013 says the biggest barriers to
successful strategy implementation are: The organization lacks change
management skills, initiatives are poorly resourced, and the organization lacks
project management skills. (They also found out it’s “44”.)
The recommendations from these
studies urge you to embrace a smarter and a more wholesome approach to
the execution of strategy. Yet something is missing: a methodology that
supports the connecting of strategy to the components of the execution. Let’s
summarize from the learnings above and add the missing, connecting piece:
1. Adopt best practises.
All of the proposed best practices and improvements are needed. Ensure your
team cherishes competences and methods for communications and change
management. No excuses allowed!
2. Get organized. For
execution, a program office is needed as a mechanism of prioritization and
implementation of projects. Also needed is a guiding process that integrates
the typically separate corporate activities. This process should be clear to
all parties from formulation to implementation.
3. Get systematic. A
comprehensive approach needs to be supported by a methodology where things can
be connected in a meaningful way: Enterprise Architecture. Yes, that
thing that’s based on ancient cults of Zachman and TOGAF, and that uses a
clandestine language of ArchiMate to explain, with a holy metamodel, how all
things necessary in IT, business, and universe are connected. The novelty in EA
is how you use it in a business
outcome driven way. EA forces you to define strategy, and its goals with
concrete targets. It can also provide transparency – an improved understanding
of what can be achieved. Taking
advantage of new technology can be enabled by using EA, and it also helps in closing the feedback loop on execution.
With these actions, I believe THE
ANSWER will be improved. As my favorite aphorism goes: Current ways of working
equal current results; New ways of working equal improved results.
Please comment: Did you already try it – what are your
key learnings? What is you way of ensuring
the implementation plans are aligned?
PS. Thanks to Gail Severini and others in Balanced
Scorecard /Strategy Office Executives Linkedin group for throughly
clarifying the topic.
Sami Lotvonen
Sami Lotvonen
his process should be clear to all parties from formulation to implementation.
ReplyDeleteTop web designing company