Now that we’re beyond the initial lockdown and pause, I’m seeing many firms under immense pressure to move straight from strategy to implementation without taking stock diagnostically of their capabilities. Productive implementation is something that we used to take for granted – but with the accelerated shifts driven by remote work in the face of the virus, it’s now not optional.
It’s a temptation that I often see (and have fallen victim to myself): you have a meeting and develop a rich new insight for a product, service, or process. You put the meeting notes together and your very next step is to get those involved in implementing that process or product together to swiftly move toward implementation.
It seems for all the world like the most direct path to success and quick results, yet for any opportunity that is meaningful, it leads to quickly getting stuck.
With COVID-driven work from home, it’s even harder. We are limited to audio and thumbnail videos of one another where we once were present in a group. Our ability to discern and initiate subtle discussions, pick up conversation threads, and have quick sidebar conversations are now deeply inhibited.
This means that it’s much harder to effectively work in creating fresh, cross-functional thinking to implement our best insights.
Set that against the need to improve our results and rapidly pivot our firms to new and fresh demand, and you have a recipe for frustration.
What’s missing, is a clear, deliberate path to implementation.
In the past, strategy implementation is usually sponsored by a member of the senior team: the project management office is brought in, functional heads are brought in, resources are budgeted and there is a kickoff meeting.
Even pre-COVID, within 90 days (through no fault of the teams) many times the rich opportunity had slowed to a crawl.
We need a better way.
5 Reasons Firms Resist Developing a Strategic Implementation Framework
The hidden assumption in using the firm’s normal execution path is that this new strategic work is going to behave in the same way as their core strategy and business decision making. With “move the needle” work, this is usually not the case.
The current people, process, and technology paths of the business have been carefully honed and evolved to deliver consistent, repeatable results. Humans are pattern-making machines – we enjoy the same flavor coffee, grab the same breakfast, even use the same words over and over. All these patterns create an intense unspoken effort by the firm to “revert to the mean” and hang on to the status quo.
To get the new insight over this immense hurdle of “status quo” requires a temporary structure where we leave our comfortable “swim lanes” and work together to build a “new” structure. This always implies using a cross-functional approach.
Getting a firm to step back and develop a plan begins when the sponsor realizes that this work is not observing the same rules.
Why do firms resist doing the work to get a real implementation plan in place? Experience has shown that there are five reasons:
#1: The “Halo” Effect of Current Competency
The firm is typically solid and has great operational success in their chosen areas of the core business. They set plans and are able to achieve them routinely. This can lead to overconfidence in doing the “new” business line or service offering. When the cracks begin to show, it’s very hard for the PMO to “back up” and do the cross-functional work to get things back on track.
#2: Seizing Early on an “Un-Evolved” Problem
A close cousin to the above is putting together a plan to deliver exactly what is outlined in the strategy document without testing its true ability to meet the client’s needs. Many times the core strategy document was done at a high level and points to an opportunity that is directionally correct but only adjacent to the real issue or pain point of the client or customer. To truly understand precisely what is needed, some collaboration is required, and this is rarely done in the initial strategic outline. Once you have an implementation team up and running, it’s very hard to pause to serially refine the offering – even though it’s crucial to the success of the effort.
#3: Culture Impedes the Presence of Clarity Producing Conflict
In many mature firms, there is a subtle pressure to avoid conflict, even when it is needed. When I work with smaller more nimble firms, what you find is that they are actually the mirror opposite – knowing that by challenging one another, they are able to produce much better ideas and ultimately better products and services. One starting point tip for this is what I call “engage a curmudgeon.” In every firm, there are those who are known for being hard to please. As we work through our implementation plan, we always go seek them out.
#4: Lack of Resources to Run Down Real Answers
You might think that strategic efforts would be first on the list when it comes to resources – and many times, monetarily, this is true. But the work of implementing the strategy needs more than budget – it needs your best subject matter experts from the core business units to engage and help build the knowledge base that will take the implementation from a high level to synergistic integration.
#5: Diffusion of Ownership (Matrix)
In mature firms, key resources are spread across several project teams in a matrix. The project manager needs to negotiate time slices of these people to contribute to core business issues. When a fresh strategy is being implemented, you need more than a point resource input, you need committed team members who will own the implementation and be willing to “change lanes” to support the best outcomes for the full team.
These five are powerful inhibitors to getting fresh strategic projects in place. So, then what’s the risk if we don’t take them on? By allowing these to take root and lock in the status quo, your firm loses its ability to listen, pivot, and evolve. This shows up quite subtly at first – perhaps a smaller competitor takes a share in a niche that doesn’t seem that important or your financials are showing that margins are flat to decreasing.
The truth is that once the firm is locked into serving the status quo its destiny is locked in – and not in a good way (see articles here, here and here).
Doing the Implementation Diagnostic
The anecdote to the above is making the investment in a diagnostic to assess, relative to known patterns, your firm’s unique footprint of resistance. This tool provides key insights into what’s needed to find, form, and empower just the right team, with the right plan, to get the results you are projecting.
This work has three elements: the clarity of the opportunity, the clarity of the patterns that will resist, and a precise plan of action. To get this work done, I’ve worked out efficient one-day workshops to unlock a team’s ability to see the opportunity and the resistance clearly so they can innovate on approaches to get the new opportunity in place.
While each firm and strategic effort are unique, the patterns of resistance are not. By doing the pre-work to detail them prior to full commissioning of the team, you can make better decisions and avoid consuming time, money, and resources only to have to back up and solve the underlying issues down the road.
Of course, much of my work involves working with teams that have stalled on behalf of the stakeholders. If you find yourself caught in the implementation gap, contact me and we’ll talk about how to get you restarted – many times with just a handful of sessions.
How I Help
I help firms choose the most efficient paths to implement their strategy.
I bring the experience of jump-starting dozens of teams and co-developing precise plans to make the results they are seeking an inevitable outcome of the actions and investments they are making.
In short, I help leaders make a clear diagnosis and then use known patterns to make specific shifts and take actions that induce success.
If you’d like to have a conversation with me about a complex or elusive challenge, please email me at scott@scottpropp.com, or use this link to put a call directly on my calendar.
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