In big “S” strategy – the destination is like the choices you’ve made. Your organization must be different in the future, in some specific and limited ways, for its enduring success and survival. You and your Team have identified these choices and changes as critical and necessary. But the route you take to get there – the little “s” strategies and tactics you define can – and will – change. You can’t plan for every eventuality, but you must be able to respond and pivot when needed.
So how do we reconcile committing scarce resources we can’t recover to an uncertain and imperative future that we need to get to? We think there are two concepts to that are important at this stage – the notion of adaptive persistence (a concept I learned long ago from Professor Ajay Sirsi) and focusing on expected behaviours.
Strategy shares as much in common with evolutionary biology as it does business. We can marvel at species capabilities and wonder why it is so? But we know the process by which a fish can swim, a bird can fly, and a gecko can change colours so as not to be eaten is because over a long period of time they were able to adapt traits favourable to their environment. Over time, certain of their species didn’t adapt. But those that were able to keep evolving and keep adapting in ways that mattered survived. Organizations are no different (but they don’t have the luxury of millions or billions of years either).
So, if all we have is the ability to continually change and adapt to be relevant and sustainable, and we have limited time to do so, then perhaps we have to be more deliberate when we set out on our journey about how we have to act and behave. As a team driving critical strategic change in the organization, we all need to show up with a mindset of adaptive persistence – that we don’t become disheartened or paralyzed when our path becomes blocked, and that we are adept and quick to size up new routes to get to our destination.
Which brings us to the second key concept in mastering execution – how we behave and work together (aka Culture). Culture is often mistaken as ‘that stuff that the HR department is supposed to do’. Experience has shown how critical it is for organizations to articulate and commit to a set of shared values – and the behaviours that flow from them – if they wish to remain an enduring success. Culture and strategy are inextricably linked – and nowhere more profoundly than in the work of executing our plan.
The topic of values and culture is huge and way beyond the scope of what we would try and cover here. To keep it simple, we like to end our strategy process with what we call expected behaviours. If a good strategy calls for change in the future, then it’s likely that the people in the organization must adapt and start focusing on one or two new behaviours that will make them successful. (Caveat – it might not be a ‘new’ behaviour, but it could be one that needs to be a higher priority and brought more into focus).
An example could be teamwork. If an organization is used to working in silo’s (say selling their multiple products to customers through different channels), but realizes now that competing for their share of customer wallets in the future is more about presenting an holistic organization (because the customer prefers to deal with one person who can represent multiple products), then their product development, marketing, sales and finance team’s will have to develop more behaviours (and practices) about working together more closely. Or maybe it’s resilience. Or more disciplined decision making. Or more customer focus. Or more curiosity around data driven insights. Whatever it is, call it out and be specific about what you now want and need from your Team to execute your strategy.
