Strategy is about making choices
Posted by Grant Brewer on 01 Sep 2005
Strategy in organisations needs to be a continuous, living thing – a continuous strategic conversation. But strategy isn't a planning event or a weekend away with your executive colleagues. Strategy should be translated into everyday behaviour throughout the business. This is one the biggest challenges of strategic leadership. Any leader can hire consultants to define a realistic and effective strategy for their business, even though the leadership shouldn't rely on consultants to generate their strategy since defining and implementing strategy is why leaders are paid. But not every leader can get the business to internalise that strategy so that it permeates to the very culture of the business.
Strategy is implemented through people and people live the strategy through their behaviour. Behaviour is a function of values, beliefs and emotions, each of which should be specifically considered by management when implementing strategy. Connecting the strategy to your team members' and your customers' beliefs and values can significantly strengthen its impact. It will be more powerful because the strategy will appeal to the hearts and minds of the team and the strategy will be executed by passionate team members that are committed to its success. This is a far cry from strategy executed in a command and control style. This is why it is wise for organisations to make a big deal about their values – it is just a pity that so many organisations limit their value systems to a poster on the office wall.
Encouraging behaviour to align with strategy
Leaders should make sure they do everything possible to make it easy for their teams to behave in a way that is congruent with the strategy. The behaviour will be congruent when the expectations, requirements and decisions are clear to everyone. People are frequently not comfortable existing in a vacuum where there isn't clear direction, focus or decision making – and people are usually uncomfortable following directions that are contrary to their values and beliefs. If strategy is implemented through behaviour then leadership has to help team members make the right choices as they go about their day. This is challenging since in a modern world, every organisation's people are faced with a myriad of choices every day.
Making the choices about what the organisation stands for can contribute to better strategic execution because the translation of the strategy into day to day operations will be better understood. Increase the transparency in your organisation to significantly raise the understanding people have of business decisions. Explain decisions and make the outcomes of decisions very clear.
Good decision making is about being decisive and about choosing the best option given the information available. There are natural constraints in business, such as financing or talent, meaning that you can't have everything – that is why making the correct choices is important to strategy execution. Decisiveness is important because frequently any decision is better than no decision at all. Taking risks is part of any leadership role and the difficult decisions are never black and white issues. Experience, instinct, trust and confidence are all part of the make up of a good decision maker and a good leader.
Choosing your customers
One of the large strategic choices that senior management need to establish revolves around who the organisation should do business with. This choice is all about trying to become more customer centric. The goal is to customise the delivery of products or services to the specific needs of different customers. Just as people like to be treated as individuals, organisations like individual attention.
The outcome of choosing which customers are going to be the main focus is often known as Strategic Account Management. Strategic accounts should be the accounts that hold the most lifetime value to the organisation. Many strategic account management programs fail because in addition to dealing with selected strategic accounts, the organisation still finds it difficult to give up business at existing clients even where that business might not be profitable. In other words, they have not made a choice; they are still trying to have it all.
Making sure that the choice of strategic accounts articulated in the strategy is reinforced through the behaviour of people is a key step in making strategic account management successful. This should apply from account managers right through to the junior team members. The whole idea is that you have to get the organisation to live the choices made to implement the strategy; live the focus on strategic clients. For example, management can set a terrific example by choosing to stop servicing a particular customer because that customer isn't among the selected strategic accounts. This would send a strong message to the entire business about the way in which they are empowered to reflect the strategy choices in the behaviour.
Putting management energy into resolving outstanding choices in the organisation is a great way to increase the strategic focus. If you feel like your strategy implementation is stalling, then spend time identifying areas where you have been hedging your bets and communicate some clear choices to your team. Get your team used to living with the consequences of their difficult decisions – the business reality is that they just can't have everything. They need to make decisions and choose.
Seeing strategy as something that happens continuously through the various people that make up your organisation is a key to successful strategy execution. This is reinforced when leadership live the choices necessary to implement the strategy. The culture and behaviour of the entire organisation can shift priorities and align with the strategy as a result.
Strategy is about making choices was published as Strategym #30 in September 2005
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