Studies have shown that up to nine out of 10 strategic plans fail. Whilst most organizations are competent at strategic planning, very few have a systemic and systematic approach to deploy, learn, and integrate plans for improved performance results. Many believe that excution relies solely on leadership and planning, but the missing link of having a strategic performance framework is the key to overcoming this wide-spread weakness.
An analysis by Fortune magazine found that:
- 60 percent of organizations don’t link strategy to budgeting
- 75 percent don’t link employee incentives to strategy
- 86 percent of business leaders spend less than one hour per month discussing
strategy - 95 percent of workers don’t understand their organization’s strategy
Successful strategic execution is more than just translating strategy into operational tactics. It is even more than making strategic goals part of everyones role. It is about connecting all the components of sucess:
People – Processes – Technology – Insight
Quality guru, W. Edwards Deming introduced the concept of seeing an organization as a ‘system’. Adopting this perspecctive, strategy, tactics and performance measurement must be aligned to this overall system.
Kaplan and Norton attempted to do this using Balanced Scorecard, however for many organizations the activity around approaching strategic performance using a BSC framework is too onerous and takes too long. Whilst Balanced Scorecard is valuable from an overall performance perspective, Strategic Performance is concentrated on the delivery of rapid action in response to ever changing strategies.
The SPM Framework used in Leading with SPI takes the best methodologies from multiple disciplines and breaks them down into a simple to implement capability that flexes with the business and provides a direct link to the current strategy. Without such a framework, there is no practicable way to ensure that the four components of sucess are connected.
Resources
For more information on how to lead your organization using strategic performance improvement: