Global strategy execution and it accountability an accelerator approach
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The document discusses a comprehensive approach to global strategy execution, highlighting that over 84% of organizations fail to effectively implement their strategies due to skipped steps. It outlines a cycle of understanding, transforming, implementing, monitoring, and adapting strategies with an emphasis on accountability and collaboration among stakeholders. The need for a strategy accelerator framework is emphasized to enhance corporate success and facilitate continuous improvement in execution processes.
Global strategy execution and it accountability an accelerator approach
- 1. Global Strategy Execution Approach and IT Accountability – An Accelerator approach – Research Artifact: Reddappa Gowd bandi, Chief Enterprise Architect, Ness Digital Engineering 26 th July 2016 Initial Pitch: 1. Most of the Corps/Organizations today (more than 84% as per HBR) follow a partial approach or skipping some important steps in Strategy execution cycle. 2. It fundamentally creates a vaccum in terms of limited or no understanding of a specific strategy at Corp level. 3. This inability has an exponentially decayed impact on the success of Strategy execution at overall Organization/Enterprise wide. 4. Need an approach and accountability Post Strategy creation in order to better understand the approach across the groups/stakeholders and create a sense of accountability and self- evaluation or reconfiguring themselves. This research artifact from a Chief Enterprise Architect provides, • An Executable view of such a strategy at organization wide • An approach of Whole-to-part understanding of Strategy which is a bi-directional and adaptable primarily to any IT organization/Corporate but also extensible to any non-IT. • An accountability of ownership in the Strategy execution cycle. • Last but not least, need of Strategy Accelerator framework within Corporate Strategy execution. Pre-Context: • Most of the Corporate/Organization has its own Global Strategy Planning approach or strategic consulting teams work hand-in-hand with strategic committees and develop/create a Global strategy. • Any goal behind developing a successful strategy is o How are we going to win the Period ahead o What is that Game Plan needed • Organizations come-up with a solid strategy at high level but 84% of the organizations fail in translating that strategy into well-defined execution plan or skipping many implicit steps which are “very essential”. • This paper focuses those steps and discusses in a Strategy Execution process steps.
- 2. Global Strategy Execution Process: In a simplistic view, the Strategy Execution Process is a cycle and key steps involved are 1. Understand the defined Global Strategy with right set of Strategy execution stakeholder views 2. Transform & Translate the Global Strategy to Local Strategic Plans/elements 3. Implementable/Actionable Local strategy Plans Phase – PLC/SDLC phases 4. Monitor & Measure phase – Demos & Dashboards 5. Learn & Adapt – Strategy Accelerators A clear communication level input needed from each to step to other and make strategy cycle more animated and easy to understand and continue. Let’s take a look at each step and have the execution level details needed, Global Strategy Execution Life cycle - Details: As per above execution process steps and build a wheel of execution cycle, 1. Understand & Define- • Understand strategy elements externally (Inside-Out) o Organizational business imperatives, Mission and Vision o Focus areas and goals o Operating models & Revenue areas • Understand the strategy elements internally (Outside-In) o Market outlook, Emerging trends o Competitive Advantage, Innovative new market areas o Internal strengths & What we can do • What is the defined strategy of the Corporation/Enterprise o Created strategy elements, Validation at second level o Elaborate them to second level concepts o Map them into Mind-mappings • Distribute them into Horizontal and Vertical strategic elements o Framing • Understand the Strategies of Functional and Geographic peers o Functional areas, capability groups o Regional understanding (Second level strategic feasibilities) o Peer level • Functional/Geographic strategy referred to as Extended strategy o Extended Strategic flavors added – Local Strategic elements o Map or align Global strategic to Local strategic elements
- 3. • What do Customers want (Low, Medium and High demanded) o Visualize the local strategy to what direct Customers want o Visualize what the closed user groups needed o Map Direct customers and Extended customers to the Local Strategic elements o Prioritize High, medium and low demands o May be some of these covered in the Strategy creation. • What market offers today (Low, Medium and High) o What are the market side offerings today to those users/groups o A 360 degree view of Market vs Customer o Prioritize High, Medium and Low Opportunities o May be some of these covered in the Strategy Creation. • What Competitors contributing and doing (Low, Medium and High) o Competitive Advantage vs new/niche Opportunities o Opportunities vs Customer centric view o Capabilities vs Customer vs Competitors vs niche opportunities o Prioritize High, Medium and Low 2. Transform & Translate - • Digested understanding model from above translates into respective Mind-mappings and EA artifacts o Min-mapping models (Customers, Capabilities, Features) o Possible EA Artifacts (not advocating any new specific tool or framework. Not discussing an EA approach towards the problem) o IT strategy models and Global strategy tracking • Convert Mind-mappings to specific plans aligned across the organization (functional units, regional department and etc.) o Elaborated mind-mappings into IT strategic views • Develop a path way from Enterprise/Corporate goals to Local goals and initiatives, build an alignment matrix o Corporate goals to Business Initiatives o Business initiatives to Domain/Group/Region level Local Goals. o Local goals to Portfolio level activities • Elaborate Local goals into feasible activities and associate them into Goal-Activity alignment matrix o Executable Activity models (not UML activities) o Multi Portfolio level executable Visions
- 4. • Focus on prioritization exercise with Strategic stakeholders - 1st level - Outcome is Multi-year Initiative/Portfolio level roadmap o Identify extended stakeholders at Portfolio level o Identify the Portfolio level scope & Exercise with Priorities o High level Multi-Year Portfolio level Roadmaps • Continue the prioritization exercise with Extended stakeholdes -2nd level - Outcome is Program/Project level roadmap aligned with Portfolio o Identify the 2nd level stakeholders for the strategy execution o Understand and communicate Portoflio level scope into second executable elements o Each Executable Activity is an independent Element (project) or set of Elements (collection of projects, in other words can be a Program) o High level Project and Program level execution Roadmaps o Map Activity to Project/Program alignment o Map Portoflio to Activities • Align and refine the Priorization process - Outcome is Executable roadmaps o Order of Elements execution, dependency resolve strategy and Activity completion o Consider and study the Extended activities (Support, Lights on, BAU AND AMS) o Include them as an extended roadmap level element. o Refine the prioritization of the road map elements and communicate with right Road mapping tools. • Each Executable roadmap element is defined with Success Metrics (Local to Global, Element to Project to Program to Portfolio to Corporate) o Each roadmap element is a Project Opportunity with a Charter or collection of a set of roadmap elements is a Program Opportunity with Charter. o Each opportunity is defined with set of goals and Success Metrics which is a qualifier for the Project/Program. o Each qualifier is mapped to the Global Strategy goals in a matrix. o Define the Success Metrics and map/align them to Global Strategic elements (Business Initiatives) • Build each Element's static view (Plan) to Dynamic view (Plan-o-gram) and map specific metrics. o Each Project or Program has a Plan to execute as per Roadmap. o Plan has two views. Static View (set of static steps but doesn’t give what happens if a step fail kind) Dynamic View (set of static steps including alternate paths to address if any step or steps failed to achieve. So it is a Programmable View of the Plan) According to me, this is a Plan-o-gram) o Programmable View is missing in most of the Execution roadmaps (across 89% of the organizations as per HBR). o Most of the project/program failures today because of lack of Plan-o-grams in the Strategy execution.
- 5. o Project/Program Managers are responsible to write these programming models on the Plan. o Now it is ready to hand-off the strategy execution responsibility to the PMO and Delivery organizations. • Build Sellable Milestones incrementally and get Funding plans done accordingly. o At each Project/Program, identify the Sellable Milestones in their Elemental cycles of execution. o These are important to work with Finance side stakeholders in terms of getting the funding and approvals for funding. o These are convincible demos to the high level stakeholders to get build confidence and incremental success tracks towards Global Strategy. 3. Implement & Action Execute – Commander’s phase - • Walk through of the plans/plan-o-grams with PMO/Delivery o Transition to the PMO/Delivery teams o Identify the individual commanders and his/her teams. o Enrich and walk through the Plans/Plan-o-grams with Commander Teams. o Real Project cycle starts from here – Re-align Individual Commander teams with right skillsets, technology and business acumen. Team level strategies will be recounted based on real understanding of the opportunity/element and PMO/Delivery acts accordingly. Tool level strategies are figured out and enrich the team with right tools. Process level strategies are figured out and help to set the element level execution methodologies. Projects/Releases will be kicked off there on. o Most of the organizations as per HBR (65%) have a very lean inclination towards this step what we call “Big Picture”. Organizations/Teams skip this step most of the times. o Understanding of this Big Picture is essential for the Global Strategy success and incremental success of that element (Project) overall. o Also this is essential from PMO/Delivery Synchronization strategy. • Build the individual Implementable Plateus of execution based on internal/external dependencies o From the Strategy implementation flexibility, better tie the elements (execution level) to a specific Plateau (EA term, space where you execute certain projects/elements with transparency and trackable with more information and Platform/Application/Data/Build and Infrastructure centric views) o These plateaus bring Executable elements maps to Platform/Technology centric views.
- 6. • Setup the PMO dashboards for all Plateaus and start PLC/SDLC o Map each Plateau to Elements and each element to the PMO Dashboard for Monitoring and tracking. • Ready to implement and move onto Actions o Release strategy, execution strategies are evaluated at Commander Teams’ level. o Action teams execute tasks as per methodology. For example, in Agile/Lean Agile, Sprint strategy followed by the incremental release level demos and etc. • Build Capabilities needed for execution (People, Process, Technology commodities and Platforms) o Conceptual Strategy in terms of Elements takes the IT components’ forms like IT physical Assets. o Commander teams transforms Capabilities and Features into physical IT Platforms (Application and Data) and Technology commodities needed for the business strategy to take a ride. o These Platforms/Commodities are validated at early stage for the compatibility of the Global Strategy execution. o Commander teams’ always open to include any “change in course” and reconfigure themselves with updated execution at element level and then trace back to the Global Strategy/Business initiative. Here, exactly what Plan-o-grams really help. • Deliver against priorities and milestones o Each individual in the commander teams works for his Microstones (deliverable unit of collection of tasks) o Delivery teams deliver the Milestones with expected deliverables. o Track the milestones o Map the milestones with global/local plans/plan-o-grams. o Update the PMO Dashboards with right set of information dynamically. o Communicate the right information about how global strategy is implemented at Element level. • Engage stakeholders needed to Deliver results o Any alternate plans to kick off as per plan-o-gram, engage with all right stakeholders so that the results delivered are always in sync with expected outcomes. o Engage through the demos at element level and reconfiguring ourselves at Local Strategy validations. o Any feedback from stakeholders which involves Global strategy deviation, manage through a “Change Management”. • Revisit frequently to map and match results to overall metrics o Revisit Elements level programs frequently, Map and match the metrics defined o Any deviation in the metrics, or strategy implementation overshoots thoroughly wetted with PMO/Strategy committees and accordingly takes a decision on the Element GO or NO GO. o Reconfiguring the team level goals help to achieve the right results at these stages.
- 7. • Adjust the Plateau level plans as per Plan-o-gram/s wherever necessary to make sure each project/program is aligned with overall corporate level plans. o Revisit exercise (Steering and Exec committee strategy reviews) from above always keeps the Project/Program aligned with Portoflio strategy scope. • Actionable Outcome is a Viewable strategy in terms of physical Platforms and Systems. o Finally Viewable Strategy outcomes in terms of Systems, Platforms and IT assets. 4. Monitor & Measure - • Monitor & Measure the incremental outcomes and surroundings and make information available through Demos and Dashboards o Each Element on the Plateau will be monitored for the progress. o Monitoring (Manual/Automated) involved at each Element on, Project/Release level Sprint/Iteration level Team Level Process level Tools & Technology o Capture the successes and anomalies against the goals/metrics o Apply quantitatively as well as qualitatively o Translate the Progress into Measurable views o Translate these views into Demos and Dashboards • Project level measure - maps to local metrics and sellable milestone o Map the each Element level metric to a Sellable milestone o Calculate the Element progress at Global Strategy Execution level. • Program level measure - maps to local/global metrics and sellable project milestones and create a cycle of accountability o Measure the element progress in a program and align to Global strategy execution o Map each element level metric to the sellable program milestone o Based on the success or failure anomaly, create a “cycle of Accountability” within Project/Program. Most of the organizations has skipped this step while traceability to the Global Strategy execution (as per HBR, it is >60%). o This Cycle of Accountability is at various stakeholders standpoint starting from Business users to IT implementation teams. • Portfolio level measure - maps to local/global metrics and sellable program milestones and create cycles of accountability o Measure the Program/Project level progresses in terms of defined metrics at Portfolio level. Always need traceability to the Element level within the Portoflio. o Map element level metrics to Portoflio level and then to Projection metrics at Corporate level (business initiatives)
- 8. o Create Cycle of Accountability at Portfolio wide. • Corporate/Enterprise level measure - maps to global metrics to business/corporate initiatives o Global Strategy Execution Progress for right targeted users via Project/Program Dashboards – Project/Program teams Portfolio level Dashboards – Portfolio heads/Business heads CIO Dashboards – CIO/IT level, Exec board CEA/CTO Dashboards – Technology Office, Architecture Office Innovation Dashboard – Innovative ways to address Global Strategy complexity – Innovation team, CIO/CEA/CTO teams. 5. Learn & Adapt - • Take the lessons learnt from each Strategy Element execution level and build a backlog of organizational experiences/expertise. o Get the lessons learnt right from the lowest (Sprint level) to Highest (Portoflio) from the Global Strategy execution cycle o Encourage Commander teams capture their Retrospectives views into a backlog o Build a backlog of demoable/visible experiences/expertise which is measurable/actionable at Project/Program and Portoflio level. o More often these becomes part of Corporate Accelerator Framework Solution Accelerators (Business/Architecture/Design & Code) Project/Program accelerators Platform accelerators Process Accelerators Innovation accelerators o Overall this knowledge base and framework to use helps Corporate/Enterprise to have Global Strategy Accelerators for future complex and business transformation strategies like Corporate Digital strategy. • Above backlog would help as a Strategy Accelerator for more complex strategies both internal and external. o Internal and External Strategy accelerators (Verified and Validated) o Corporate level Strategic assets – Strategy accelerators • Collection of Strategy accelerators and self-evaluation sessions o Continuously communicate these successful implementation strategies into White papers, allow individuals to have self-evaluation sessions and build each phase level artifacts. o Build Repeatable processes & frameworks for the above and build a rewarding system in terms of Take-Aways from each Strategic Element execution.
- 9. • Learn and Adapt actions based on experiences o Adapt above plans/plan-o-grams for continuous betterment and Experiment the same. o Minimize the early failures going forward based on the Knowledge base built as a continuous improvement strategic execution cycle. • More open to changing priorities, Market shifts and Customer level emerging needs. • Repeat the strategy execution cycle and open to correct and adjust Plan-o-grams and Plans. • Engage extended stakeholders to understand and adapt "Changes". • Weigh in Trade-offs, Re-configure at every level and own the cycle of Change from lowest to highest. • Constant communication is the best glue or a success factor for Strategy execution cycle at Corporate wide. Final Comments: 1. Global Strategy Execution is not an Ad-hoc plan but a real Game plan with more focus on many implicit steps involved in reality. 2. Global Strategy Execution is a continuous heavy Thought Partnering activity with cycle of execution, discipline, focus and sense of accountability. 3. “Implicit steps” in the Strategy Execution are a real key towards the Execution strategy and success at Corporate wide. 4. Global Strategy execution is not one time activity but a continuous cycle of execution which enhances lot of accelerators needed for the Corporate/Organization success. 5. Global Strategy is an Enterprise-wide Science and through which Technology commodities are invented and build special purpose vehicles for the Enterprise success, Business growth and Transformation for next future generations. 6. EA Program, Technology Office Program, Innovation and Digital Programs are emerged as common extended strategic ways from maturity standpoint in order to make Complex Global Strategy execution a “Simple & Reality across the next-gen Corporate/Enterprise”.