GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers
Mention strategic planning and the usual images are boring meetings, nothing that gets done, large notebooks that sit on the shelf, and , maybe , going to a nice place with food that’s better than pizza or what they serve in the hospital cafeteria. It does not have to be that way, and , if it is, you might be reading your own corporate obituary soon. Here are some things you should know about strategy:
- Strategic planning (derived from the Greek work , strategos, meaning generals) is about creating a plan that asks who you are, where you are now, where you want to go and how you want to get there. In many instances, a strategic plan is neither a strategy nor a plan.
- Strategic planning is different from strategic thinking.
- The clinical value pathway starts with domain expertise and evolves into strategic thinking
- Strategic thinking can be learned. Jeff Bezos explains how here. However, many are not built to do it.
- Strategic thinking is about connecting dots in a expanding universe or ecosystems and networks.
- Innovation starts with an entrepreneurial mindset that is, in part, fueled by creativity.
- Strategic thinking derives from entrepreneurial habits that gets you from thought, to said to done.
- If you want to know what’s wrong with a patient, just talk to them long enough and they will tell you. The same holds true for customers but sometimes it’s harder to get them to tell you the truth and to listen to it.
- Intuition is part of the art of strategic thinking, just like making a diagnosis
- Sometimes, like in clinical medicine, it is better to be lucky than good and be right for the wrong reasons.
- Here are some ideas about how to bridge the strategy-execution gap and flipping the top down model.
- Industry disruption, as Accenture research has found, is reasonably predictable. And with wisdom about its predictability comes opportunity.
In her book, Learning to Think Strategically, Julia Sloan found it takes five critical attributes to think strategically:
Having an imagination
Having a broad perspective
Juggling incomplete, inaccurate and competing information
The ability to deal with things over which you have no control
The desire to win
Once you have determined these, then you can apply it to 3 horizons framework.
If you want strategy in action, the ask your people these 5 questions:
- What are you doing today? This will bring to light any significant work that you aren’t aware is being done or that’s taking much more time than it should.
- Why are you doing the work you’re doing? This allows you to gain clarity on what’s important and why it’s important from your team’s perspective.
- How does what we’re doing today align with the bigger picture? This is a discussion about gaps and outliers. If your team is working on something that doesn’t align with the broader goals of the organization, challenge the value of doing that work.
- What does success look like for our team? This allows you to hone in on what’s really driving your team’s success, in terms of activities, behaviors, relationships, and strategic outcomes.
- What else could we do to achieve more, better, faster? This is where you push your team to be innovative. If you’ve done the work to answer the preceding questions, you are well-positioned to be strategic in answering this one.
Strategy is the composite of execution steps. Today’s successful companies close the strategy-to-performance gap with a new strategy approach best described as “Decide-Do/Refine-Do”. This agile, test-and-learn approach is better suited to today’s tumultuous environment. It also helps bridge the chasms that exists at so many companies between great strategy, great execution, and great performance.
Here are five more lessons on how to to close the strategy-execution gap.
Strategic leadership is the ability to handle complex problems for which there is no obvious short-term solution, in which the stakes are high, and in which influencing others is essential. There are at least seven challenges where your choice of a High Ground or Low Ground response will help determine whether you advance as a strategic leader.
I see a lot of newcos hiring Chief Strategy Officers. It would help if some them were humanities or arts majors in college or played in a band before they went to Harvard Business School.
Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.