|
Executive Interviews: Interview with Charles Spinosa on Strategy Execution
September 2008
-
By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Promise-based management
understands that changes in strategy
require changes in the relationships
of people throughout the
organization. People work with
others they trust and avoid working
with people they do not know or
distrust. People step up to higher
levels of performance with people
who share in what they are doing
and drop down to lower levels
when they feel out of sorts with
their colleagues. Relationships rule
over performance, and for
commercial relationships, the
promises that people request and
make to each other are the
lynchpins.Promise-based managers
therefore start strategic
implementation programs by
mapping a business's current
network of
|
|
recurrent promises and
then designing the new network of
recurrent promises that will deliver
the new strategy. By working with
people to practice the new promises,
promise-based managers coach them
through the formation of the new
relationships. Our most complete,
published account of how to create a
promise map can be found in
"Conversations with Customers," in
Kellogg on Advertising and Media.
The change leader who executes a
new strategy does not implement
new processes but rather promises
the Chief Executive that managers
and staff will embrace the new key
recurrent promises. No one can
simply implement new promises. In drawing people to embrace the
new promises and thereby establish
new relationships, there are six
basic domains in which promisebased
change leaders work at the
same time. If the Chief Executive
seeks to turn the company culture
into a competitive advantage as part
of the strategy execution, there are
other domains of action as well. For
simplicity's sake, we leave them out
of the account here. The six are:
- Identifying and publicizing the
new promise the wow proposition
to the key stakeholder, normally
the external customers or
the shareholders and making its
expected value extremely clear.
- Developing and deploying a
change program that moves from
cluster to cluster of promises
such that it can produce one
small achievement after another.
(The change leader celebrates and
publicizes each achievement.)
- Designing and using a few key,
simple measures that will show
progress.
- Developing and revising a strategic
plan that shows the benefits of
the change program for all the
constituencies involved, including
employees.
- Ensuring that the new promises
simplify the older processes.
Simplification is always a key to
the success of a strategic execution.
Since most companies' processes
depend upon an accumulation
of older practices and processes
from past strategies and
market conditions, there is always
room for simplification.
Even more important, managers
are constantly building checks
and redundancies in processes to
counter breakdowns. These create
distrust and need to be swept
away. But most strategy execution
programs simply take over historical
processes and distrustful
processes with little question and thereby create more complexity,
not less.
- Coaching key managers and employees
through the personal
transformations that will be necessary
for them to make and fulfill
new promises. Strategic execution
normally trains people in
new technologies, new skills,
and new performance measures
but forgets to train people to see
themselves differently from the
way they were. Promise-based
management coaches get people
to experience how they will be
trusted and acknowledged for
new promises kept. Consequently,
they come to own their
new roles.
On our count, promise-based
management executes strategy
successfully at least two-thirds of
the time, thus reversing the normal
numbers. Mostly strategies are made by one
team (top management), and they
are supposed to be executed by another
team. Do you think companies
can achieve better results if
they combine strategy formulation
and strategy execution, wherein the
same team is made responsible for
both strategy formulation and strategy
execution? Do you see this
thing happening anywhere?
Developing a new strategy, even an
opportunistic one, requires its
authors to go through a difficult
personal change. They will discover
that a number of their cherished
beliefs, especially ones shared by
others in the company and industry,
were wrong. For this reason, we
always advise that one member of
the senior management team who
has gone through the strategy
formulation process lead the strategy
execution. Only someone who has
gone through a transformation of
vision and the personal
transformation it entails will have
the insights and emotional reserves to guide the change program, advise
the team that designs new
relationships, and truly understand
the new value proposition to the key
stakeholder. A number of companies already
execute strategies this way: CEMEX,
Digicel, Voith Siemens Hydro, Post
Office Financial Services in the UK
to name a few. Entrepreneurs such
as Harold Schultz almost always
take part in forming and executing
new strategies. Most other
entrepreneur Chief Executives do so
also.
1.
Business Strategy Case Studies
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
|
