Three Cs of Implementing Strategy

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English: Example of a balanced scorecard strategy map for a public-sector organization (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ask most organizational leaders about their areas of focus and you will hear that strategy is among their highest priorities. Unfortunately, too often leaders pour their energy and resources into formulating strategy and spend too little time figuring out how to implement that strategy throughout the organization. Strategies are frequently created, perhaps not in an ivory tower, but often at a nice resort or conference center, by a small group of people who have been well fed and cared for in the process. Those strategies are typically beautiful, and display particularly well in PowerPoint. (I’ve never seen a strategy fail in the boardroom.) Unfortunately, most leaders fail—not in the formulation of strategy, but in its implementation.

To successfully execute an organization’s strategy, it must be the focus of every person in that organization. It is up to the leaders to create, monitor, and reward that focus as it is expressed. So how then do you provide the leadership required to implement strategies in a way that allows them to come to life in each corner of an organization? I offer that if you pay attention to the Three Cs of strategy, you will be well on your way to success in this endeavor.

Clarify your strategy: All too often, strategies are expressed as high-level statements that resonate with board and executive levels but fall flat with mid-level and frontline personnel. Unfortunately, if people don’t understand the strategy, they are unable to connect with it. So the first step is to clarify your strategy in a way that people in your organization can rally to support its implementation. Done well, this strategy will tie together your goals and objectives and clearly explain what you intend to do. In their book “Top Management Strategy”, Ben Tregoe and John Zimmerman offer a very useful definition of strategy, calling it, “the framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” Most importantly, try to stay away from “corporate speak,” or “bureaucratize,” which Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines calls “difficult to understand and boring.”

Communicate your strategy: I’ve never encountered an organization where I heard from people that we communicate too often or with plenty of clarity. So then, communication is the second C. Powerfully communicating the essence of your strategy at every level of the organization using multiple mediums is the key here. (Don’t expect the posters you had made up to do the job.) Use internal blogs and message boards, brown bag luncheons, podcasts, and department meetings to communicate what the strategy is and how everybody’s work is informed by that strategy. Discussions need to occur at each level, translating the organization’s strategy to understandable and contextualized sound bites, which connect to the work of individuals. In short, communicating the strategy provides the “connective tissue” throughout the organization that helps people understand the big picture.

Cascade your strategy: If strategy is “what” you do then tactics are “how” you do it. And if you want your strategy implemented well, you need to cascade it throughout the organization and get to the practical and tactical components of people’s jobs every day. Ideally, you will involve your managers in this process, and they will help to translate the elements of the strategy for your organization to their own functional areas. Doing this allows them to develop and own the process of cascading the strategy and designing implementation plans with high likelihood of execution. Cascading strategy is the proverbial rubber hitting the road. The bulk of the work in implementing strategy is done at this stage. It is the team meetings, the one-on-one coaching, the process improvements, the customer meetings, and the responses to the market that, in alignment with an organization’s strategy, can make a tremendous difference for an organization.

The pace of business shows no signs of slowing down and the competition in any sector isn’t getting easier. But effectively implementing strategy can be a source of competitive advantage. Try these Three Cs and see if they help. Leaders from Fortune 500 companies to small not-for-profits must be armed with the ability to effectively implement the strategies of their organization, all while juggling 100s of emails and voice mails, and addressing the exigencies of the day. Because implementing strategy is not additive work for the leader. It is, in fact, their pivotal job.

 

What is strategic thinking? (Apakah itu Pemikiran Strategik)

What is strategic thinking? (Apakah itu Pemikiran Strategik)

Your boss just told you to "think strategically"—but what does that mean? In its most basic sense, strategic thinking is about analyzing opportunities and problems from a broad perspective and understanding the potential impact your actions might have on others. Strategic thinkers visualize what might or could be, and take a holistic approach to day-to-day issues and challenges

Like all other managers, you routinely encounter complex situations, difficult problems, and challenging decisions. Your job is to deal with these situations as best you can by using the information you have. In an ideal world, you would have access to all the information you need to navigate through these challenges. Unavoidably, however, you have only a limited amount of information to work with. And because you sit in a particular part of your organization, you have a limited view of the forces that lie outside your sphere of influence

Strategic thinking helps you overcome these limitations. When you think strategically, you lift your head above your day-to-day work and consider the larger environment in which you're operating. You ask questions and challenge assumptions about how things work in your company and industry. You gather complex, sometimes ambiguous data and interpret it. And you use the insights gained to make smart choices and select appropriate courses of actioN. Moreover, you do all of these things with an eye toward generating the best possible business results tomorrow, using the opportunities presented to you today.

What does it mean to "think strategically"? How do you assess the environment in which you're operating and make smart decisions that will generate the best results?

 Why is strategic thinking important?

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes.

–Marcel Proust

When you and others in your organization think strategically, you generate important benefits for your organization:

• You chart a course for your group that aligns with the overall corporate strategy.
• You make smart long-term decisions that complement and align with decisions that others in your organization are making.
• You gain your employees' commitment to supporting your decisions.
• You boost your group's performance and maximize business results.
• You foster a culture that supports fresh thinking and embraces strategic initiative.

Strategic thinking also nets you valuable professional and personal benefits—including the respect and appreciation of your supervisor, peers, and direct reports

Defining Characteristics of Strategic Thinkers

Personal traits

Managers who think strategically demonstrate specific personal traits, behaviors, attitudes, and thinking skills.

You're on your way to becoming a strategic thinker if you exhibit the following personal traits:

• Curiosity: You're genuinely interested in what's going on in your unit, company, industry, and wider business environment.
• Flexibility: You're able to adapt approaches and shift ideas when new information suggests the need to do so.
• Future focus: You constantly consider how the conditions in which your group and company operate may change in the coming months and years. And you keep an eye out for opportunities that may prove valuable in the future—as well as threats that may be looming.
• Positive outlook: You view challenges as opportunities, and you believe that success is possible.
• Openness: You welcome new ideas from supervisors, peers, employees, and outside stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and business partners. You also take criticism well by not reacting in a defensive manner.
• Breadth: You continually work to broaden your knowledge and experience, so you can see connections and patterns across seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge.

Defining Characteristics of Strategic Thinkers

Behaviors and attitudes

You have the makings of a strategic thinker if you continually anticipate your actions' impact on a wide range of individuals—including, but not limited to, your boss, direct reports, peers, and customers.

To do this, you need to:

• Seek other people's opinions
• Ask questions and challenge assumptions about how the world works.
• Focus on the future
• Identify the forces driving your unit and company's performance and think about how to improve that performance
• Watch the competition
• Reassess who your customers are and what they value
• Stay up to date on developments occurring in your unit, in other groups in the company, and in your industry overall
• Open yourself to ongoing learning by reading books, magazines, and industry reports; attending seminars; and talking with experts

By practicing these behaviors, you more readily spot valuable new opportunities to capitalize on. And you identify and repel potential threats before they can do any real damage.

Cognitive capacities

In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.

–Miyamoto Musashi

In addition to specific personal traits, behaviors, and attitudes, strategic thinkers demonstrate characteristic cognitive capacities. They:

• Objectively analyze a situation and evaluate the pros, cons, and implications of any course of action
• Grasp abstract ideas and put the "pieces" together to form a coherent picture
• Generate a wide range of options, visualize new possibilities, and formulate fresh approaches to their work
• Factor hunches into their decision-making without allowing their hunches to dominate the final outcome
• Understand the cause-and-effect linkages among the many elements that make up a system—whether the system is their team, unit, or organization, or a project or process

Strategic thinking is a process. Successful strategic thinkers constantly reevaluate their environment and plan for the future.

Phase 1: Setting the stage

In this phase, you look at the broad implications of issues and clarify your objectives for thinking strategically. This phase includes:

• Seeing the big picture—understanding the broader business environment in which you operate
• Clarifying strategic objectives—determining what you hope to achieve by thinking strategically

Phase 2: Applying your skills

Once you've set the stage, you put your strategic thinking skills to use in order to generate results. This phase includes:

• Identifying relationships, patterns, and trends—spotting patterns across seemingly unrelated events, and categorizing related information to reduce the number of issues you must grapple with at one time
• Thinking creatively—generating alternatives, visualizing new possibilities, challenging your assumptions, and opening yourself to new information
• Analyzing information—sorting out and prioritizing the most important information while making a decision, managing a project, handling a conflict, and so forth
• Prioritizing your actions—staying focused on your objectives while handling multiple demands and competing priorities
• Making trade-offs—recognizing the potential advantages and disadvantages of an idea or course of action, making choices regarding what you will and won't do, and balancing short- and long-term concerns

 

How do successful strategic thinkers keep an eye on the big picture?

Strategic thinkers continually improve their view of the larger "business ecosystem" in which they operate. They understand their company's and unit's strategies. They stay up to date on the issues and concerns of their customers, competitors, and industry as they relate to their job function. And they consider the potential impact of their decisions and actions on the company overall and on their boss, managers of other units and teams, and employees. They do all of this with a long-term perspective rather than focusing only on the short-term implications of their actions.

They then use their awareness of the big picture to inform their on-the-job choices.

Understand your company's and unit's strategies

Awareness of your company's and unit's strategies is vital to your ability to think strategically. Do whatever it takes to understand the corporate strategy and how it affects your unit's strategy. Talk with your boss and peer managers, examine annual reports and other company publications, and listen to your CEO's speeches.

Sometimes the way in which executives allocate resources in your company can suggest something about the high-level strategy. If you observe the company is investing in acquisitions of competing firms, you might deduce that its strategy involves eradicating rivals and growing its market share.

Then use your understanding of this strategy to ensure that your group supports it.

For example, suppose your company has a clearly stated strategy of expanding into new markets overseas. You can use awareness of this high-level strategy to define your group's direction.

• If you lead a product development group, you might evaluate the appeal that your existing products have in the targeted overseas market.
• If you lead a market research group, you may want to design surveys and other tools for testing potential interest in your company's offerings in the intended new market.
• If you lead a customer service group, perhaps you'll explore how your group's services can be scaled to meet the demand of the overseas customer segment you'll be serving.

 

With every important decision that you weigh, ask, "Will what I'm considering doing help my unit and company carry out its strategy? Or will my proposed course of action make it more difficult for us to achieve our strategic goals?"

Think about your customers, competitors, and industry

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

When thinking strategically, you need to consider what's going on outside your company as well as what's going on inside. That means staying current with external customers' needs, competitors' moves, and industry trends. Your job function will determine how much you'll need to make this a priority.

For example, if you work in sales, you'll need to know your customers, competition, and industry intimately. If you work in manufacturing, however, you may not need to study your company's competition quite as closely.

To assess developments outside your company, ask these questions:

Customers. "Who are our customers, and what do they value? How might their needs evolve in the future?" Customer surveys, focus groups, and other methods can help you gain answers to these questions.

For example, after surveying customers about their latest challenges, one manager at an industrial-gas supplier proposed that the company start providing environmental consulting services to customers. He won approval for his idea, and the new service proved a hit—enabling the gas supplier to capture more of its customers' spending.

Good ideas like these can come from every level in an organization—but especially from managers who deepen their knowledge of customers.

• Competitors. "Who are our current competitors, and what tactics are they using? How are we different from them? What strengths do they have that might prove a threat to us? What weaknesses might they have that we could exploit?" You can gain information about competing companies by becoming their customer yourself, reading analysts' reports (of publicly traded companies), and networking with other professionals who are familiar with these firms.

For instance, one manager at a local retail store visited a major rival discount store in town and listened in on shoppers' conversations. He concluded that shoppers cared far more about the discounter's low prices than brand-name styles. The manager suggested to his store's executives that, to compete against the big discounter, they could strive to attract style-conscious customers. By going after a different customer segment than that sought by their rival, the store maintained a solid position in the business.

• Industry. "What trends—in technology, governmental policy, natural resources, and other key forces shaping our industry—might have important implications for our business?" You can stay on top of this information through reading a wide range of business publications, talking with other informed professionals, and participating in trade and professional associations.

For example, while reading a food-industry trade journal, one manager learned that the government was considering requiring food companies to list additional ingredients in their product labeling. The manager knew if this legislation passed, the label size would increase and could potentially overlap with some of the marketing copy on the products. Thus, the manager met with people in the marketing department and together developed a solution that met everyone's needs. By having ideas ready, he was able to prepare his company for immediate compliance with the new legislation—should it pass—with minimal delay and disruption to the business.

 

 

Three Cs of Implementing Strategy

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English: Example of a balanced scorecard strategy map for a public-sector organization (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ask most organizational leaders about their areas of focus and you will hear that strategy is among their highest priorities. Unfortunately, too often leaders pour their energy and resources into formulating strategy and spend too little time figuring out how to implement that strategy throughout the organization. Strategies are frequently created, perhaps not in an ivory tower, but often at a nice resort or conference center, by a small group of people who have been well fed and cared for in the process. Those strategies are typically beautiful, and display particularly well in PowerPoint. (I’ve never seen a strategy fail in the boardroom.) Unfortunately, most leaders fail—not in the formulation of strategy, but in its implementation.

To successfully execute an organization’s strategy, it must be the focus of every person in that organization. It is up to the leaders to create, monitor, and reward that focus as it is expressed. So how then do you provide the leadership required to implement strategies in a way that allows them to come to life in each corner of an organization? I offer that if you pay attention to the Three Cs of strategy, you will be well on your way to success in this endeavor.

Clarify your strategy: All too often, strategies are expressed as high-level statements that resonate with board and executive levels but fall flat with mid-level and frontline personnel. Unfortunately, if people don’t understand the strategy, they are unable to connect with it. So the first step is to clarify your strategy in a way that people in your organization can rally to support its implementation. Done well, this strategy will tie together your goals and objectives and clearly explain what you intend to do. In their book “Top Management Strategy”, Ben Tregoe and John Zimmerman offer a very useful definition of strategy, calling it, “the framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” Most importantly, try to stay away from “corporate speak,” or “bureaucratize,” which Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines calls “difficult to understand and boring.”

Communicate your strategy: I’ve never encountered an organization where I heard from people that we communicate too often or with plenty of clarity. So then, communication is the second C. Powerfully communicating the essence of your strategy at every level of the organization using multiple mediums is the key here. (Don’t expect the posters you had made up to do the job.) Use internal blogs and message boards, brown bag luncheons, podcasts, and department meetings to communicate what the strategy is and how everybody’s work is informed by that strategy. Discussions need to occur at each level, translating the organization’s strategy to understandable and contextualized sound bites, which connect to the work of individuals. In short, communicating the strategy provides the “connective tissue” throughout the organization that helps people understand the big picture.

Cascade your strategy: If strategy is “what” you do then tactics are “how” you do it. And if you want your strategy implemented well, you need to cascade it throughout the organization and get to the practical and tactical components of people’s jobs every day. Ideally, you will involve your managers in this process, and they will help to translate the elements of the strategy for your organization to their own functional areas. Doing this allows them to develop and own the process of cascading the strategy and designing implementation plans with high likelihood of execution. Cascading strategy is the proverbial rubber hitting the road. The bulk of the work in implementing strategy is done at this stage. It is the team meetings, the one-on-one coaching, the process improvements, the customer meetings, and the responses to the market that, in alignment with an organization’s strategy, can make a tremendous difference for an organization.

The pace of business shows no signs of slowing down and the competition in any sector isn’t getting easier. But effectively implementing strategy can be a source of competitive advantage. Try these Three Cs and see if they help. Leaders from Fortune 500 companies to small not-for-profits must be armed with the ability to effectively implement the strategies of their organization, all while juggling 100s of emails and voice mails, and addressing the exigencies of the day. Because implementing strategy is not additive work for the leader. It is, in fact, their pivotal job.

 

Why strategies fail to be executed or implemented

» Why strategies fail to be executed or implemented
Nine out of ten strategies fail to be executed or implemented successfully?. Why?
We are starting to understand the very important lesson that implementing strategy is harder than creating the right strategy from the study of success and failures of previous strategy Executions. When we triumph over execution it can become a blue ocean strategy – that is a competitive differentiator and while there are many tools and techniques for crafting strategy there are very few for implementing it. Rosabeth Moss Kanter put it very eloquently when she said: “Ethical standards and our ability to groom future leaders inevitably decline. That’s why execution, or “making it happen,” is so important. Execution is the un-idea; it means having the mental and organizational flexibility to put new business models into practice, even if they counter what you’re currently doing. That ability is central to running a organization right now. So rather than chasing another new management fad, or expecting still another “magic bullet” to come along, organizations should focus on execution to effectively use the organizational tools we already have.” To further support Rosabeth Moss Kanter comment, consider the fact from Barons that only 15% of the 974 programs reviewed in Fiscal 2005 were rated effective. In addition, from 1917 to 1987 only 39 of the original Forbes 100 survived and only two outperformed the market, GE and Eastman Kodak. Many strategies are expected to deliver growth. This creates even more issues due to the “Growth Paradox”. As businesses grow they create new and larger challenges which again emphasizes the need to be good at strategy Execution It is time to switch the focus from just crafting strategy to crafting and implementing it. If for no other reason, it is estimated that U.S. managers spend more than $10 billion annually on strategic analysis and strategy formulation. If 90% fail then that is a waste of $9 billion.
Strategy Execution is a relative new field that’s genesis was the high failure rate and lack of a framework. The field is about 10 years old and the research on the subject is just being gathered. There has been various research: 1. Kaplan and Norton, the originators of the Balance Scorecard, published also that 90% of organizations fail to execute their strategies successfully. 2. In a study of 200 organizations in the Times 1000, 80% of directors said they had the right strategies but only 14% thought they were implementing them well, no doubt linked to the finding that despite 97% of directors having a ‘strategic vision’, only 33% reported achieving ‘significant strategic success’. (Source: Why do only one third of UK organizations achieve strategic success? 3. Harvard Business School teaches that at least 70% of all change initiatives fail? 4. A long term study by Newcastle University, (1973 – 1989) showed that business success is governed more by how well strategies are implemented than how good the strategy is to begin with. 5. The Economist Intelligence Unit reported that organizations realize only around 60% of their strategy’s potential value because of failures in planning and execution. With the pendulum now swinging away from leader’s main responsibility of crafting the strategy to the recognition that they are also responsible also for its Execution and that can be even harder, there is a fast growing global interest in the field.
Strategy Execution is defined as the actions an organization takes today to deliver the strategy, tomorrow. The key word is “action”. People in an organization are always taking action. The critical question is, “Is it the right action?” Are the actions that their staff members are taking today driving the Execution forward? We know staff members are always busy and frequently have more work than they have hours in the day but strategy Execution is the collective individual actions taken every minute of every day by every staff member. If there are not enough of the right actions being taken then the strategy is heading for the graveyard. “One of top management’s biggest blind spots is the failure to recognize that any significant shift in strategy requires changes in day-to-day activities throughout the organization. Small shifts may require only minor changes. Significant shifts require significant changes-from subtle to sweeping-that can only be successful if implemented systematically. And people at all levels can either help or hinder the transition.” Executing Your Strategy, Get It Done by Morgan, Levitt & Malek Leader’s also have a fundamental responsibility to create the right conditions in the organizations. They must, for example, encourage the right people; clearly communicate the strategy objectives, create the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); align the culture to the Execution; redesign processes, change the way staff members are reinforced to encourage the right behaviors and actions for the new strategy to be implemented and then review the strategy execution every two weeks. This can be an overwhelming list but if it was easy to deliver the promises of a new strategy then nine out of ten executions would not fail. And the pass mark is when the leaders deliver at least 50% of the objectives of the new strategy. The leaders must identify what needs to be done and where to put the organization’s focus. Although it is not unheard of for two organizations to have the same strategy, for example number one in the industry or differentiate through customer service or leading product, each organization’s Execution of the strategy is unique and the leader must first identify what needs to be done and then lead staff members to perform the required behaviors and actions. The leader’s role is to translate the strategy in to daily actions that staff members can take. Strategy Execution is not the same as change management. Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with change, both from the perspective of an organization and on the individual level. It is applied as the solution for running out a new sales program as it is for strategy. Strategy Execution is a specific approach which drives the right actions today to deliver tomorrow’s strategy. The challenge is for leaders to stop doing what doesn’t work. Change management is flawed as a methodology for implementing strategy as the research is revealing. If we keep doing the same thing then no wonder we keep failing and the strategy fails! It is time to change the way we think about change. We must go beyond change management as we know it and focus on Execution. Consider that 30 years ago management was about control and change management was designed as command and control. But business has dramatically changed. We have moved to empowerment and a teaming methodology. Many leaders use change management out of ignorance, as they are not aware of an alternative and end up taking the wrong the actions. After crafting the strategy for the organization’s future the leader’s role is to ensure that staff members are set up for success in its Execution by being guided by the leadership on what actions to take. The problem on many occasions is that even the leaders do not know what the right actions to take are. In addition leaders often have the wrong mindset. Leaders often underestimate the Execution challenge and what is involved. They believe that once they have created a new strategy, the hardest part is over. Not true. The hardest part – Execution – is just beginning. In the 10 per cent of organizations that successfully implement their strategies the leaders double the effort compared to what they had spent crafting it. In some cases, leaders are cognizant that Execution requires extra effort. In reality, however, very few are able to free up valuable time and resources to do justice to the Execution process. In other cases, leaders become so caught up in managing the day-to-day business that they lose sight of their goal to implement the new strategy and as such are taking the wrong actions. The research in the field of strategy Execution started to become part of the mainstream awareness in 1999 when Fortune Magazine ran a front page on “Why CEO’s Fail”. The article, which has since been quoted on numerous occasions, explained that “organizations fail to successfully implement strategy not because of bad strategy but because of bad execution”. This was one of the first times the field of Execution (execution and Execution are interchangeable), had received major exposure. In 2002 Ram Charan followed up the article by co-authoring with Larry Bossidy Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Crown Business, 2002. The book made execution a common word in business conversations. Since its publications there has been a greater focus on the topic by leaders and a handful of books and articles have followed on the same topic. There is, however, still a vast gap of knowledge, techniques and tools in the field. For much of the last 40 years the focus in business has been how to create the right strategy and quite rightly. It is the leader’s responsibility to create strategy, it is what they are paid the big bucks for and it is critical to the success of the organization that they get it right. A plethora of tools and techniques have been created to assist in the strategy formulation. Hundreds and even thousands of books have been written on the topic and in every city, consultants are standing by to offer leaders their support and wisdom. As a result we have improved at understanding strategy and how to create it. Although it is worth noting that even strategy is still being developed. Consider the simple fact that we do not have a globally common definition for the word “strategy”. There is a change in the wind. In the last ten years we have started to ask, “What happens after we create the strategy and why are there so many failed strategy Executions?” These questions are just starting to be asked because we are just discovering from the research that so many strategy Executions fail. Instinctively most leaders know that Execution is tough and can recall at least one corporate wide Execution; they participated in, that failed. It is, however, only in the last few years that strategy Execution has started to become a recognized field in its own right. We are starting to understand that Execution fails not because we have the wrong strategy, in most cases, but because the challenge of implementing the strategy is tougher than most CEOs and leaders anticipate and they underestimate the whole challenge. Professor Joseph Bowler of Business Administration at Harvard Business School recently said, “One of the criticisms we would have of some of our colleagues who have studied strategy (and some consultants who advice on strategy) is that they assume that once you design strategy it gets executed. They don’t look inside the process and realize that it’s much more complicated.”

Main source: http://strategyimplementation.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/strategy-implementation

The 5Cs of Strategy Execution Dr Andrew MacLennan’s latest book, Strategy Execution: Translating Strategy into Action in Complex Organizations (2011) Compiled by Muhamad Bustaman Abddul Manaf Institute Aminuddin Baki, Ministray of Education mbustaman@iab.edu.my In 1956 a Princeton psychologist published what became one of the most famous papers in the field of psychology. George Miller entitled his article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”. He was fascinated by short-term memory span and studied people’s ability to recall items in a list. As his title implies, he concluded that most of us only recall seven, give or take a couple. It’s because of Miller and his study that I restrict my answer to five things, when asked, “what’s the secret to successful strategy execution?” Of course there is no simple secret solving all strategy execution challenges. But there are five things that really matter and as luck would have it, they all begin with the letter C . The 5Cs of Strategy Execution C 1. Causality. Successful strategy execution relies upon undertaking activities that will plausibly cause organisations’ strategic objectives to be achieved. However, in many organisations an enormous cognitive gap exists between ideas and actions. Explicit cause and effect reasoning can bridge this gap, by translating conceptual objectives into concrete activities. Equally, causal logic can be used to align projects and initiatives with strategic objectives ‘bottom-up’ – not every legitimate activity emerges from ‘top-down’ planning. Managing this alignment process effectively is perhaps the greatest strategy execution challenge. C. 2 Criticality. Criticality is vital alongside causality because large organisations undertake huge numbers of activities, making them highly complex systems. It’s impossible for organizational leaders to analyse and manipulate all these activities. Successful strategy execution relies upon reducing this complexity to focus resources and attention on the activities critical to delivering the strategy. Isolating critical activities in this way can resolve many dilemmas that leaders and managers face in their day-to-day work. C 3. Compatibility. It is not enough for managers simply to translate strategic objectives and strategies into apparently critical activities. They must also ensure that these critical activities will pull the organisation in a consistent direction. Activities that individually appear to support objectives may together have a different effect if they are incompatible. For example, problems will arise in an organisation that relies upon creativity and innovation but also operates a prescriptive performance management system that discourages unplanned activities. If compatibility is restored – perhaps by defining where innovation is essential and adjusting the performance management system accordingly – desired outcomes are much more likely to appear. This example illustrates an important point: organisational designs and systems, as well as plans, heavily influence activities. C4. Continuity. Applied effectively, causality, criticality and compatibility allow the identification of activities that will plausibly cause strategies to be realised. However, identifying critical activities is not enough; they must also be delivered. Organisational designs and systems need shaped accordingly. Strategic decisions must usually be passed down through hierarchies. As this happens, teams and individuals must interpret leaders’ intentions, determine the contributions they can make and take appropriate action. Where the continuity in these baton changes breaks down, strategic intentions are derailed. Continuity is also important over time, creating a threat from short-term distractions, structural reorganisations, personnel changes, budget cuts and so on. The ability to deliver critical activities needs to be baked into organisations’ designs and systems. C 5. Clarity. The fifth ingredient for successful strategy execution is clarity – such that individuals understand strategic objectives, how they are to be achieved via critical activities and how organizational designs and systems support their delivery. If they are to take rounded decisions at the coalface, they need to understand priorities and the trade-offs inherent in them. Leaders must help staff interpret how each of the 5Cs manifests itself for them as individuals. Staff need to know how their own actions plausibly cause overall objectives to be achieved (causality) and what the most important performance drivers are to prioritise their time and effort (criticality). They must not be pulled irreconcilably in different directions (compatibility) or made unproductive and disengaged by failing structures and systems (continuity). Clarity over all of these, at the individual level, increases goal congruence and commitment, which in turn heightens strategy execution potential. Ensuring compatibility, continuity and clarity seems a huge challenge, given the sheer magnitude and complexity typical in large organisations. Where do you start? By focusing on critical activities, ensuring they are compatible, managed for continuity and clear. That is a feasible challenge and a central