Strategy Execution Grows Up

This week I attended the Ventana Research Connections Conference, where the 2007 Performance Management Leadership Awards were presented.  I'm glad I went, not only because our clients won two of the top three awards, but also because I saw even more evidence that companies are accelerating their understanding of "performance management" -- in fact, I think this maturing trend is becoming a flood.

At our client conferences over the past several years, the discussions and questions have evolved from "how do you do this?" into lively exchanges around much more mature topics, like how to encourage culture change and how to drive/sustain long-term improvement. We now have large organizations sharing best practices from multi-year implementations.  The Ventana folks confirmed during their wrap-up that they are seeing the same things.

We are seeing these topics coming up in other performance management conferences, as well as in industry specific gatherings. This is a good thing.  It shows that people are realizing that performance management can't be just about technology.  It is about executive support and leadership, culture change, process improvement, business reviews, and employees' individual goals.  That's what we call Enterprise Strategy Execution.  It's nice to see it burgeoning ever more widely.

I'll be speaking next week at the 2007 Performance Conference in Las Vegas (as will one of our award-winning clients - Kaiser Permanente).  I'll be talking about the importance of Structured Business Reviews in really driving results within a Balanced Scorecard or Strategy Execution framework.  We've been talking about that subject for years, but lately it seems to resonate quite a bit more than it used to.

Comments

[Michael Brazukas]

Jeff makes excellent points. Going back a decade, the principles in use today were there, but the level of integration and supporting technology weren't evident. Today, the sophistication of strategy execution techniques has reached a new level. What's more important is the fundamental proven successes in various industries. This has transformed strategy execution from a management fad into 'a better way to run an organization.' This one won't fade, for sure.