Recently a strategy consultant was overheard saying she writes romantic novels. Look into many organizations and, although said in jest, it has more than a modicum of truth to it.
Don’t get me wrong. The high-level strategic plans are important and necessary. But, the devil is in the details, the down-and-dirty task and activities that really make things happen. Back in 1999, a Fortune magazine study suggested that 70 percent of CEOs who fail do so not because of bad strategy, but because of bad execution. ("Why CEOs Fail," R. Charan and G. Colvin, Jun 21, 1999.)
Strategy implementation is an internal, operations-driven activity that involves organizing, budgeting, motivating, culture-building, supervising, and leading to make the strategy work as intended. It involves people understanding their role in the big scheme, how it links throughout the organization, and the impact it has along the way. Hoshin Planning is one methodology that helps organizations through this process. This tool helps to cascade out detailed work plans: it indicates how projects are to be led and resourced, shows linkages to the organization’s vision and mission, identifies the accountable or responsible parties, aligns the work plans, and indicates how progress and results will be measured.
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Comments
Strategy Isn't Enough
I think strategy is a must because everyone within an organization needs to know the direction of the company and how their job/function supports the strategy. Disciplined implementation is also a must if you want a near flawless execution....chaos cost's a company time, money, and resources. However, the most important and often overlooked aspect of both strategy and implementation is communication. I've implemented large scale, multi-site projects that went smoothly because of the time that I took to communicate to all parties directly and indirectly impacted by the project.
I'm not sure, but I would think that writing a romance novel requires a lot of strategic planning to understand the role of each character before the novel is even written....very similar to strategy and implementation planning in Corporate.
I would like to learn more about Hoshin Planning and look forward to any future articles.
Sandra Gauvin
http://CurrentQuality.com
What is the no. 1 barrier to effective Hoshin Planning?
Absolutely agree! The devil is in the execution, not the strategy!
In today’s competitive economic climate, organizations stand or fall by how well they deliver against the promises they make to stakeholders. There are two likely causes of the failure to deliver on promises made: either the strategy itself was fundamentally flawed, or the process through which strategy gets disseminated and executed was ineffective. In the majority of cases, it is this execution process that lies at the heart of the problem with the root causes of this being one of the following:
· Lack of alignment between top level corporate strategy and the initiatives which take place at a tactical level
· Management reviews are predominantly focused around lagging measures which measure outcomes, and not leading measures which predict what the outcomes will be
· Organizations are unable to accurately predict the impact that the successful completion of actions will have on the Key Performance Indicators, and ultimately, strategy.
The process of Hoshin Planning or goal deployment, using the powerful X-Matrix, is being implemented by a number of organizations to help address these root causes however, as discussed above, many organizations still fail to achieve their goals.
As part of my ongoing efforts to understand the challenges companies face in successfully using Hoshin I have created a LinkedIn poll. Click here to participate in this poll and share your thoughts.
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