Introduction

Strategy is the way forward for any organisation that wants to achieve its purpose and vision. But how do you ensure that your strategy is actually delivered, and not just a nice document that gathers dust on a shelf? How do you align your people, processes, and resources to your strategic objectives and priorities? How do you measure and monitor your progress and performance, and make timely adjustments when needed?

Many organisations struggle with these questions, and face common challenges that hinder their strategy delivery. In this blog post, we will explore some of these challenges, and how you can use Viva Goals, a powerful Microsoft technology solution, to facilitate your strategy delivery. We will also discuss how Viva Goals can complement methods for managing and aligning corporate governance within an organisation, such as Business Integrated Governance (BIG), to create a comprehensive and holistic approach to strategy delivery.

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – Deepteam Director, CPS Chairman and Founder of the BIG CIC

Lester Lovelock – Head of Practice – Modern Work Management, CPS

Please note – this Blog shows one technology example – we encourage more partners to explain their connection too.

Why is there such a gap between strategy and execution?

There are many challenges inherent in aligning strategy and delivery within your organisation. This post focuses on three of the 7 themes outlined above that can represent challenges to strategy delivery: enablement, control, and integration. Let’s look at each of them in more detail (Reference – the BIG CIC Services Taxonomy).

Enablement

Enablement refers to the ability of the organisation to empower its people to deliver the strategy. This involves setting clear and realistic objectives, allocating sufficient time, resources, and budgets, and prioritising the most important and impactful activities. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine this enablement:

• The organisation has too many competing objectives and related activities, which create confusion, overload, and conflict.
• Leadership time, resources, and budgets are overcommitted. Prioritisation is ad hoc and academic, rather than based on data and evidence.
• Strategic priorities are regularly overridden for short term expedience, which erodes the trust and commitment of the stakeholders and the staff.

These issues result in a lack of focus, alignment, and engagement, which reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of strategy delivery.

Control

Control refers to the ability of the organisation to monitor and manage its strategy delivery. This involves defining clear and measurable plans and indicators, collecting and analysing reliable data, tracking progress and performance, and making informed and timely decisions. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine their control:

• Objectives are not supported with clearly defined plans and measures, which make it difficult to assess the feasibility, scope, and impact of the strategy.
• Performance is difficult to measure with reliable data. Progress is reported on tasks, not objectives, which can obscure the actual value and outcome of the strategy by focusing primarily on the delivery.
• Alignment drifts between objectives and activity, which creates gaps, overlaps, and inconsistencies in the strategy delivery.
• Meeting agendas are not well controlled, which leads to unproductive and unfocused discussions and actions.
• Assurance is not built into governance operation, which exposes the organisation to risks and uncertainties.
• These issues result in a lack of visibility, accountability, and agility, which reduce the quality and speed of strategy delivery.

Integration

Integration refers to the ability of the organisation to coordinate and connect its strategy delivery across different domains and levels. This involves creating a big picture of how the objectives cascade, connect, and combine, aligning the governance approaches and practices for overall coherence, and enabling cross-functional support and collaboration. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine their integration:

• Low confidence that objectives are actioned within business planning, which creates a disconnect between strategy and operations.
• No big picture of how objectives cascade, connect, and combine, which prevents the organisation from seeing the interdependencies and synergies of the strategy.
• Parochial approaches to governance not aligned for overall governance, which creates silos and conflicts among different domains and levels.
• Lack of performance baseline for governance operation, which makes it hard to benchmark and improve the governance effectiveness and efficiency.
• No cross-functional support to enable integrated governance, which limits the sharing of information, resources, and best practices.
• Information and data facilities not adequate to manage or provide assurance, which hampers the quality and availability of data for decision making.
• Disconnected information sources not designed to aggregate upwards, which impedes the consolidation and communication of data for reporting.
• Use of processes and tools not adequate to operate governance, which reduces the usability and functionality of the governance systems.

These issues result in a lack of coherence, consistency, and collaboration, which reduce the scalability and sustainability of strategy delivery.