We engaged our audience and asked them on what were their symptoms of strategy delivery performance. From over 30 responses, some raw examples include:

• “Strategy is set in a bubble and disconnected from the running of the business”
• “As a board member the board approves the strategy but has to constantly check to see if the executive is implementing it”
• “There was a lack of or no agreement on the plan”
• “no clear vision of where we want to get to that resonates with all levels of the business to keep us motivated”
• “Strategy expertise at Executive level”
• “A key problem is when staff see operational tasks as somehow separate to strategy”

We proposed back our distillation of the clear messages about strategy delivery we've been hearing at these events, and in our own experiences, covered in more detail in this blog and discussed core concepts and principles to address the issues.

We then asked the audience - What is stopping our organisations from improving strategy delivery? Many points came back!

•  "A key problem is when staff see operational tasks as somehow separate to strategy"
•  "Having a solid understanding of the baseline of running the business.  Dare I say lack of clear prioritisation :)"
•  "They cannot define the word Strategy"
•  "Who's responsible for delivery- it must be a CEO role surely"
•  "Our egos and holding onto the now (fear of change to roles and accountabilities)"
•  "back to KPIs and measures - don't know if you are really delivering"

We then proceeded to talk about Tactics to engage, and suggested it is all about people - and in this scenario - very senior people.

We spoke about Nemawashi (Nema - around, Washi - roots), and explained the need for a discussion picture and principles based discussion tool. We discuss identifying stakeholders and a more detailed approach to them in another session.

We offered an example of what output from this engagement might be - with the goal clearly defined as getting consensus on the issues, and a high level vision for how to solve them - with agreement to do 'something'.

We closed by offering a roadmap for an improvement journey - but stressed that step 1 was to engage people in the opportunities and threats posed by their current strategy delivery operation before trying to build solutions (which people don't buy into!)

We closed by asking:

• What are some of your strategy delivery challenges?
• What views do people hold about these? 
• Is there appetite to improve?
• Who do you need to talk to next?