Transformation and strategy-focused leaders have long recognized the importance of bringing structure to the strategic programs they are responsible for executing. Whether supported by an advisor or an enterprise center of excellence, these leaders are defining delivery processes that integrate process management with quantified value tracking. They are investing in mobilizing and aligning organizations around strategic goals. And they have embraced new technologies to increase program team productivity and maximize value delivered.
But ambitious strategic leaders increasingly also recognize that to maintain competitiveness in a rapidly changing world, better execution of individual programs is only a first step. Strategic change is never a one-off activity, and effective strategy execution must become a sustained, repeatable discipline of the organization.
The path forward is to develop strategy execution as a true business capability – analogous to order-to-cash, talent acquisition, materials management or any other standardized, cross-enterprise capability. And there are significant advantages to managing strategy execution like any other business capability: a critical mass of knowledge and experienced team members, repeatable best practices, process scale, clear technology requirement definition and visibility into cross-capability dependencies. Further, by explicitly defining a strategy execution capability, it becomes possible to measure and set goals for delivery strategy execution as an enterprise-wide discipline, not just one-off efforts.
Done well, enterprises will see several key benefits – both short and longer-term:
- Strengthen the enterprise’s strategic framework: Align the entire organization against clear and measurable business objectives
- Improve the execution of individual strategic programs: Reduce risk of program failure and help each strategic program realize full potential
- Optimize an overall strategic program portfolio: Manage dependencies and trade off resources across programs
- Scale strategy execution across the enterprise: Create reusable assets and process, build stakeholder support by validating benefits delivered, and quantify the business case for continued change
To learn more about the role Shibumi can play in establishing an enterprise strategy execution capability, please check out our web site or contact us to schedule a deeper dive discussion.