TheSFO

Along with a constantly evolving operating environment, increasing and diverse
stakeholder expectations, and growing human and financial resources pressures,
the statistics tell us that

Less than 10% of organizational strategies effectively formulated
are effectively executed (Fortune magazine)

The end result is often sub-optimal organizational performance, an inability to deliver to
stakeholder expectations, and a failure to achieve your organization's mission.......

However, some organizations seem to be able to achieve success despite the
challenges.

How do they do it?

The success secrets of high performing organizations reveal a common theme - they ALL
focus on becoming a strategy focused organization by executing five key elements:

¤ They Mobilize Change through Executive Leadership
The most important element for strategic success is ownership of, and active
involvement by, key organizational leaders in strategy formulation and implementation.
Leaders must understand that strategy implementation is really a change project and
that they play a critical role in mobilizing the organization and leading/managing
organizational change. In addition, leaders must work continually to integrate the
strategy into the way people think and work everyday.

¤They Translate Strategy into Operational Terms
Understanding how mission and vision statements relate to meeting stakeholder needs
and delivering client service can be a challenging task for key audiences including your
employees. Critical success steps in the strategy execution process include: making
strategy easier to comprehend, and linking the strategy to organizational processes,
services, and activities. Assigning employee accountabilities that align with strategy
helps people understand how they link with, and can contribute to, strategy execution.

¤ They Align the Organization with Strategy
Successful strategy execution requires every part of the organization to be aligned with
the corporate strategy. Business units, departments, teams, and functional support units
must determine how they contribute to the achievement of corporate strategy and build
this into their own business strategies (this is called strategy cascading). The last step in
the alignment process includes putting the resources required to execute the strategy in
place (usually through a strategy focused budgeting process).

¤ They Make Strategy Everyone's Job
Strategy execution isn’t just for organizational leaders – it requires the
contribution of everyone in the organization. For employees to contribute
they must understand the strategy (including the context & objectives) and
their role in implementing it, and then they must complete their day to day
activities in a way that contributes to strategic success. Success with this
element requires two-way communication – clear strategic communications
from the top plus opportunities for employees to feed strategic insights and
learnings into a dynamic strategy re-formation process.

¤ They Make Strategy a Continual Process
Successful organizations implement a formal process to systematically
measure and manage the achievement of strategy. This allows an
organization to learn about its progress with strategy execution and the
impact of its strategy in delivering its vision and objectives. This
understanding allows an organization to adapt and re-formulate strategy on
an evolving, dynamic basis. This in turn means that business strategy
remains relevant to stakeholder needs in a changing operating
environment, enabling mission achievement.