Implementation Strategies

Congratulations, your team has developed a shared vision for the future. Now comes the hard part - implementation!

The five secrets of successful implementation

1. Personal accountability. It may require a cast of many to achieve the result but success requires a single point of accountability - the Owner of the Key Result Measure (KRM).
2. Implementation leadership. The cast of many requires clarity, coordination, and continuous communication facilitated by the KRM Owner.
3. Ongoing huddles. Utilize regular implementation team meetings to complete a cycle of assessment of where you are and why, agreement on the next course of action, and who is accountable for the next set of actions.
4. Pay yourself first.Maintain a strategic queue separate from your operational to-do queue. Make sure you and your team devote 5%-15% of their time on strategic initiatives.
5. Free up resources. Simplify lower priority tasks, delegate, and identify steps and processes that can be eliminated.

Personal accountability

Part of what makes a strategic goal strategic is the fact that it deals with changing status quo. By the very nature of these goals’ implementation requires the coordinated efforts of several team members. How do you deal with the challenge of managing tasks dependent on several people? There are a couple of strategies that help:

• One, named individual takes responsibility for delivering the final result. That person manages both their personal effort (about 50% of their time) and the assistance they receive for others (about 50% of their time).
• Up front the owner of the result - the responsible, accountable party - makes sure every contributor knows what they are expected to contribute and by when. The owner can act as a coach once the contributors are on board, understanding and committing to delivering their piece of the puzzle.
• The owner takes responsibility for 100% of communications making sure the contributors understand the importance and impact of any memo, email, report, etc. The owner is proactive in making sure that the contributor is on track to deliver.
• If a contributor runs into some sort of snag the KRM Owner pushes to simplify tasks, reassign tasks, call others in to help, brainstorm, etc.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Implementation leadership

The KRM Owner leads the effort to achieve the outcome.

• The KRM Owner can account for where you are, why you are there, and what you are doing about it
• The KRM Owner facilitates the ongoing "huddle" team meetings, scheduling, solidifying decisions, following up
• The KRM Owner accepts no excuses. They beg, borrow, or "steal" the required resources.
• The KRM Owner prevents bottlenecks, tracking down required input/approvals, shifting assignments as required, forcing effective communications.

Ongoing huddles

The management tool is the huddle, held with the team on the field at that moment.

A football huddle lasts 30 seconds or less. A short tactical huddle typically last between 5 and 15 minutes. A strategic huddle, like the quarterly review or annual event lasts 1-2 days.

Agreement is the first phase in the cycle. It is necessary to agree on the priority of issues, tactical approach, and expected outcomes among the appropriate stakeholders. At a strategic level, this agreement is best reached between the CEO and the senior team during a two-day meeting and documented in the strategic plan. At a tactical level, reaching this agreement can be as simple as the huddle football players hold before every play.

Accountability refers to personal accountability or responsibility for completing a task and producing the agreed-upon outcome. Whether for a tactical action step or key result measure, one (and only one) person must be designated to be accountable. There will always be multiple people involved, but without a single point of accountability you get the situation where everybody is "responsible" but in reality nobody is.

Action is tactical. It is a burst of activity that moves us closer to a key result. One person is personally accountable for making sure it happen. There is a specific time period during which it will be completed. (Texas Instruments called this the W3 model – What will get done, Who will be accountable to make it happen, and When will it be completed.)

Then it's time to huddle again beginning with:

Assessment is accomplished in a meeting. To assess tactical actions, these meetings could be a daily, weekly, or monthly huddle that starts with a question of what you may have learned about previous plays, weak spots, etc. Strategically, senior management needs to close out the year’s strategic goals during an annual two-day meeting. Closing last year’s goals requires that management identify where the status quo has actually changed, and evaluated the success at achieving goals.

Pay yourself first

Recognize that operations is not a to-do list that will ever be finished but rather it is a black hole that will suck up any and all time you give it. In order to complete the important as well as the urgent you need a strategy:

• Recognize that 90%±5% of your time and resources is consumed by the day to day needs of operations. Scale your strategic goals to the 5% - 15% of time you can afford to invest in the future.
• Pay yourself first – i.e. make sure you put 2-6 hours/week into working the plan and let operational needs fight over the remaining hours.
• Make the merely important things urgent by aligning them with an external event like a trade show. (Or by using your command authority. “I need this report on my desk Monday morning!”)

Free up resources

How can you find the time to get it done? It can be done! That is why you get paid the “big bucks”. Don’t allow yourselves to become OBE - overcome by events.

• Reduce your effort on the less important tasks. (Apply the 80/20 rule)
• Use management techniques: delegation, simplification and risk management.
• Set realistic milestones based on the amount of discretionary time you actually have available (anywhere from 5-20 hours/week)
• Work smarter.
• Work harder.

How do you sustain strategic momentum?

Every year gather together a strategic planning team of the 5-12 people that will create the future and, as importantly, live with the consequences of that future. 

Applying all their passion and competence over two days; they build and/or rebuild the Progress Pyramid from the bottom up by repeatedly asking how. 

• How do you fulfill Vision? - by achieving your Mission
• How do you achieve your Mission? - by executing your Strategy
• How do you execute your Strategy? - with Strategic Goals
• Will the status quo get the job done? - unlikely, hence the need for strategic goals
• How do your goals change the status quo? - by implementing key results
• How will you implement key results? - by taking action in the here and now. 

Why wait? Myrna Associates can guarantee you will have a strategic plan in only two days! Check out your strategic planning services today.

Preparing for your strategic planning meeting

Congratulations, you, and your team have committed to developing a shared vision for the future!

Here are some thoughts to help frame and prepare you for the upcoming meeting

1. The Pledge. The strategic plan is not a license to do stupid things.
2. Roles. Participants act as Executives, considering the organization-wide impact in every discussion and decision.
3. Meeting Etiquette. It’s important that everyone hear, understand, and incorporate other team members insights.
4. Strategic Planning Concepts. Understand differences: an event vs. a process; strategy vs. tactics; strategic vs. operational; results/outcomes vs. actions.
5. Strategic Plan Timeframes. The plan visualizes the future over various, human-relative, timeframes. What do we want the future to look like in a generation, a decade, and a demi-decade? What do we focus on accomplishing within a year-and-a half, a year, a quarter, and today to make that visualization a reality?
6. Evolution of the Strategic Plan. The plan is not chiseled in stone. Elements of the plan evolve at a difference pace as we gain more insights; achieve objectives, and the environment changes.

The Pledge

Put your hand over your heart and repeat after me: “I will never do something stupid.”

Go ahead, trust me.

“I will never do something stupid because of something written on a sheet of paper.”

The strategic plan you develop is a tool to enhance focus and communications. It is not a license to do stupid things.

This is a pledge that I have every member of every planning team take when they are working to define their strategy. Strategy is the collective set of answers to the questions about what we want the future to look like, why, and how to make it happen. Effective strategy requires specifics, such as these examples:
               grow revenue to $25 million within five years
               identify and grow a new market to account for at least 10% of revenue
               reduce dependence on our largest customer to under 25 percent.

Executives are rightfully cautious about volunteering specific numbers, based on concerns that doing so will contribute to their team making stupid decisions in the future, such as:
               allowing managers to use planning numbers as clubs to beat them with,
               not adjusting to new information and changes in the environment, or
               missing serendipitous opportunities.

This pledge and utilizing the processes of strategic planning that incorporate ongoing adjustment, frees you to develop, implement, and manage the right strategies for your company’s success.

Participants' Role

1. Look at the organization through the eyes of the CEO.

2. Represent the organization, not yourself, not your people, not your department, not your function.

CEO’s Role

1. Act as a participant, not as the “omniscient individual.”

2. Suspend your usual problem-solving and “time-saving” operating mode.

Meeting Etiquette

Abide by the ten rules for productive meetings, rules that develop trust, consensus, and commitment.

1. Listen actively.

2. Speak up and say what needs to be said – there are no sacred cows.

3. Focus on solving problems rather than placing blame or being defensive.

4. Respect differences of opinion.

5. Avoid cheap shots.

6. Stay focused.

7. Add only new information to the discussion. Don’t flog a dead horse.

8. Permit only one discussion at a time.

9. Silence implies understanding and agreement.

10. Finish with consensus and commit to action.

Strategic Planning Concepts

Strategic Planning vs. Operational Planning. Strategic planning is concentrated towards attaining the long-term objectives of organizations. Operational planning is done to achieve short-term objectives of the company. These are used to set priorities and align the resources, in such a way that leads to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

Strategy vs. Tactics. Strategy is an overarching plan or set of goals. Changing strategies is like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier—it can be done but not quickly. Tactics are the specific actions or steps you undertake to accomplish your strategy.

Results/Outcomes vs. Actions. The difference between results/outcomes and actions is that an outcome is information, an event, object or state being produced as a result or consequence of a plan, process, accident, effort or other similar action or occurrence. Results are tangible. Action is an activity that might or might not produce a result. (One takes action but celebrates results.)

Strategic Planning vs. The Strategic Plan. Strategic planning is a process rather than an event. The strategic plan is the outcome of the planning meeting. It documents the plan however it is not chiseled in stone. It is based on the best available information and thinking. As the team executes the plan new insights will emerge, environments may change, and assumptions will be proven or disproved. These new insights will be incorporated in the plan – tactical insights immediately, strategic usually during the annual planning meeting.

Strategic plan timeframes

The timeframes of the strategic plan are aligned with timeframes that resonate with the human condition.

The first three elements of the plan are Strategic – where we want to go ­­­The last four elements are Tactical – how we get there

• Vision: aligned with a generation, the average period, generally considered to be about 20–⁠30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children
• Mission: aligned with a decade, a point when people audit the meaningfulness of their lives as they approach a new decade in chronological age, further suggesting that people across dozens of countries and cultures are prone to making significant decisions as they approach each new decade.
• Strategy: aligned with a demi-decade, far enough in the future to affect a major change yet close enough to support sufficient detail to provide direction for tactical focus. Five-year timeframes have proven to be the most useful.
• Strategic Goals: aligned with Eighteen months, the time a newborn is no longer a baby but not quite a child. A strategic goal is strategic because it literally changes the status quo.
• Key Results Measures: aligned with an annual cycle, one that is embedded in the cycle of life. Individuals are conditioned to achieve objectives in time for birthdays, marriages, and/or religious celebrations.
• Action Steps: aligned with a seasonal cycle that is embedded in the cycle of life. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer. Ninety days between planting corn and harvesting it. Tactical action steps are informed by current available resources and what’s been learned over the past 90 days. Further out than 90 days, actions are no longer tactical.
• Daily actions are the only thing you have control over. “Is what I’m doing today consistent with our strategy, mission, and vision?” If not, then adjust what I’m doing today or if the entire world has changed, reconvene the strategic planning team and change the strategy, mission, and/or vision.

How do you sustain strategic momentum?

Every year gather together a strategic planning team of the 5-12 people that will create the future and, as importantly, live with the consequences of that future. 

Applying all their passion and competence over two days; they build and/or rebuild the Progress Pyramid from the bottom up by repeatedly asking how. 

• How do you fulfill Vision? - by achieving your Mission
• How do you achieve your Mission? - by executing your Strategy
• How do you execute your Strategy? - with Strategic Goals
• Will the status quo get the job done? - unlikely, hence the need for strategic goals
• How do your goals change the status quo? - by implementing key results
• How will you implement key results? - by taking action in the here and now. 

Once the team has reached consensus and achieved commitment you are free to focus 100% of your energy on implementation.

For over 40 years Myrna Associates has worked with CEOs and their Leadership teams to turn vision into reality.

Through a blend of facilitating periodic strategic planning meetings and one-on-one coaching, their team-driven, strategic management process has enabled over 200 different organizations to achieve exceptional communication and focus, leading directly to sustained growth, leadership development, and lower CEO stress.

Unlike traditional strategic planning "experts" and their conceptual processes, the Myrna approach to strategic planning gets everyone to focus on what’s really important, which results in proactively changing the status quo, not with a lifeless, bound summary, but with a proven implementation process that engages the team, keeps people on track, and regularly held accountable for 30-, 60-, and 90-day action steps.

Give Myrna Associates a call to discuss how his team can help you achieve exceptional communications and focus
Phone: 

https://calendly.com/adammyrna/consultation-session-with-myrna-associates

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“Our team is a fantastic one, from a creative level, but we lacked the discipline piece for accountable follow-through. Myrna Associates helped us, in two short days, to mature professionally, which will begin to guide us to solid growth.”

“In two days we've accomplished more in terms of gaining control of our future and focusing our efforts to reach our goals than in the previous 15 years.”