Improve your strategy delivery – but you have to think BIG

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Event Report:

Improve your strategy delivery – but you have to think BIG

Strategy development and delivery is not perfect in many organisations. Why is this?

There are many well documented reasons, but many of them boil down to ineffective organisation governance failing to hold our innovative excitement together.

At events on the 17th June and 7th July 2022 hosted by Mark Constable of the APMG, David Dunning presented a viewpoint in discussion with Carolynn Chalmers from the Good Governance Academy.

We could have talked about what we have to stop doing and avoid, about the compliance we need – but instead talked about the integrated approach to governance that we can achieve greater strategy accomplishment and greater business agility with.

We don’t have to wait for magic to happen anymore - we have Honest Engineering!

We explained that we can leverage ISO 37000 and the Business Integrated Governance model to help us organise ourselves for success. We can use tried and tested delivery methods out of the Praxis Framework.

Target audience:

Strategic Leadership and Support Functions
Change Portfolio Leadership and Support Functions
Transformation Professionals

Contents:

Establish the case – strategy delivery is not perfect - google search, recent workshop evidence
Brainstorm to capture audience experience of strategy delivery not being perfect
Position effective organisational governance as the framework to set, manage and deliver performance – and develop it through strategy. Magic doesn’t just happen
Position ISO 37000 as the background principles to draw from
Explain the delivery options – BAU delivery and innovation, Projects and Programmes (e.g. Praxis), agile delivery, product management
Principles are great – methods are great – but we need to implement an operating model. Again - Magic doesn’t just happen
Brainstorm to capture audience experience of trying to implement strategy deliver solutions
Position Business Integrated Governance as the delivery means – lifecycle and logical model

During the session, we held a couple of feedback sessions where we asked:

What is you experience of strategy delivery not being perfect? We offered some categories to guide responses:

Sensing and listening - do we keep in top of the changing drivers for strategy (in a turbulent world)?
Formulation - is the process for defining strategy good enough?
Integration and Alignment - are all the activities and sub strategies configuration managed?
Prioritising delivery and accomplishment - can we allocate leadership, resources and funds to get change, BAU and value generation all accomplished?

In summary:

A key point suggested was that "organisations hurry the listening and sensing". There were also suggestions that the listening can be sporadic - so that changes in the turbulent world do not get translated into strategy adjustments. There is also a view that leaders only listen to other leaders, and one suggestion was that executives don't really want to hear what is happening.

There were a number of points raised with respect to formulation. Too many objectives, not enough engagement. While there have been points in other sessions about coming up with the wrong strategy, this session was more about lack of business connection, communication and deriving achievability. We did not explore whether organisations maintain a cross business resourcing model which would illustrate the resources deficiency or incorrect prioritisation, but this appears to be an issue.

There were several points raised around Integration and Alignment. Some realised that this is about effective communication and communicators, and having the good material to deliver that upon (which is not always the case). One comment suggested there was a team in their organisation to make the alignment between strategy team and change portfolio - but they did not mention alignment with BAU and value generation. Others lamented that some blind and vocal stakeholders could hamper this activity, as would lack of ability to translate aspiration into specific actions.

Prioritising delivery and accomplishment had the most points raised. Most of the points were about the lack of ability to prioritise and balance resources between BAU and change, the lack of appreciation of the leadership, resource of funding implications for change, with poor communication and by implication - no information model integrated governance approach or support body or assurance to enable this to be managed.

What is you experience of trying to implement strategy delivery solutions? We offered some categories to guide responses:

Ability to change way of doing things
Agreement of key stakeholders
Operating model suitability
Strategy information model

In summary:

There were many comments that questioned their organisations ability to change the way they do things. Remarks suggested it was a challenge to provide a robust change management intervention, control framework, or provide capacity to enable change, while others questioned the ability / will to prioritise systematically.

The point about agreement of key stakeholders was to do with getting consensus to make a change to the strategy delivery ecosystem - as during the presentation - it was made clear that an integrated approach was required. Parochial approaches would help - but only to a point and some suggested senior 'rogue players' contravened the strategy. Some questioned the willingness 'to be bold enough' to address difficult issues at senior levels.

Some comments arose about Operating model suitability. Some recognised the importance of portfolio management - but that was in relation to project portfolios, not a portfolio of portfolios including BAU and Value Generation workstreams. There was a question about the relation of expectation to realistic achievability. It was not clear that many had integrated governance models presently

Some comments arose about Strategy information model with a suggestion that 90% of employees do not know the strategy. It was implied that personal objectives were about achieving operational performance rather than higher level. Others implied that bad culture would affect strategy delivery rather than be part of the scope to improve.

Within an hour, the session had started to offer answers to these issues out of ISO 37000 and the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) Model.

Please watch here for the session recording, or contact us for a more detailed analysis of the issues raised and specific responses to the points made above. Slides are available on request.

A follow on session is also being prepared (tentative agenda below) - watch this space!

Why is strategy delivery such an issue (recap - we can link to previous session)
Intro to ISO 37k and BIG as the 'Honest Engineering' basis (recap)
Deeper look at ISO 37000 & BIG
Introduction to Praxis (as in - what is it)
What’s in this for me?
Roadmap
“First Steps” and engagement approach example – overcoming inertia

Useful Links:

APMG - More events are available here

ISO Standard

Good Governance Academy (GGA) - Integrated Organizations Research Forum

On line GGA ISO 37000 Course

BIG Introduction (Search for “Core P3M Data Club” in YouTube)

Changing Strategy Delivery – Event Information and Registration for 13/9/2022

Praxis - BIG Pages

If you could not attend, but would like to know more about running a session like this for you?

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