Technology Clarifies Strategy Execution

Last week, ActiveStrategy's seminar series on Enterprise Strategy Execution had a stop in San Francisco. While delivering my 6th of 9 presentations at this 2-day event, something hit me.  Let’s call it a small epiphany (though really it’s something I’ve known all along, but am just now fully embracing).

My focus within ActiveStrategy is on providing consulting support to organizations wishing to pursue better Strategy Execution.  So, my perspective can be rather myopically focused on how to teach and educate executives on the methodologies of strategy execution.  As we all know, just gaining this understanding is a major hurdle and the first part of the change process in the strategy execution evolution or journey.

Though ActiveStrategy is also a software company, I often find myself avoiding references to the software and explaining strategy execution as divorced from software or automation. This has been partly to ensure I'm operating with complete integrity for my clients and partly because I've feared that bringing in a  software discussion might cause confusion, diverting attention away from learning the core, underlying methodology elements, which are the prerequisites to using the software.

I believe that this separation technique may have been valid up until a couple years ago.  But, today, the market (which I define as the management ranks of most organizations) has evolved significantly. The fundamentals are understood now more than ever.  Increasingly, the realization that strategy execution must be facilitated by technology is more of a norm than an exception.

So, my little epiphany came during a workshop session in which I was teaching the principles of initiative selection and alignment (a.k.a. picking the right improvement projects that drive strategic objectives).  Conceptually, it’s not that hard to grasp.  But what I realized is that people need to see the theory in action.  What do initiatives look like in their real, day-to-day form? How do you create that elusive alignment between these activities and your strategic plan?

On the fly, I decided to bring up a demo version of ActiveStrategy software to illustrate the concepts we were reviewing. The engagement level of the group immediately kicked up several notches.  The questions started coming in concerning all sorts of tactical issues related to initiatives, which meant they were both grasping the fundamental methodology and thinking through how to actualize it in daily life.

This is my new knowledge.  People need to learn the concepts ALONG with the software. The software can help them put the concepts into use, so just seeing it helps make the concepts more tangible and applicable.  The software is not a distraction.  It is a learning enabler.  It is the flashlight shining on a foggy path in the dark woods.

From now on, I will purposefully be injecting the software system into my consulting work and presentations.  Learning in abstract is fine, but hands-on learning accelerates the strategy execution learning curve.

Comments

[Carlos Maxwell]

You are right that incorporating the software can help teach strategic management concepts; it makes presentations come alive. But I think the circumstances have to be right. In my experience, using the software to highlight the concepts works well with executives and others with a pretty good understanding of strategic management. But when I am working with people without that understanding, I purposely deemphasize the software. I find that if I bring up the software with this group to demonstrate how performance management works, the conversation always ends up on the system's bells and wistles and not on how it can be used to improve performance. I guess in the end, you need to judge what approach is going to work with different kinds of people.