“All that matters on the chessboard is good moves” Bobby Fischer. Strategy drives day-to-day execution or is the other way around? If you can’t execute the strategy what good is it? Revenues down, where does the problem rest, bad strategy, bad execution, or a combination of many things? Where to start looking?
In part one of this series, I talked about the Leader of a company that made the statement to me: “I need help: half my company is on a rocket ride to the moon and the other half is exhausting itself driving a wagon train to Kansas.” So why the disconnect? When I have asked Leader’s if they want employees to be innovative, I never heard NO for an answer. But how does innovation fit with their strategy or execution?
This isn’t about a new strategic plan, an improved incentive system, or more communication it’s about the Leader knowing if all the piece on the chessboard are aligned to make the correct moves to win the game and effectively communicating that message. We make things to complicated. I believe simplicity is one of the critical keys to aligning for effective execution.
You know I like stories so here is an alignment story. My all-time favorite (easy to understand) Corporate strategy was developed by the Linder brothers who founded In-Fisherman in 1974. Their corporate strategy was, ‘Teach the World How to Fish’. They chose to focus on their customers number one problem, ‘how to get better at catching fish’. Typically, companies that choose a Corporate strategy of solving customer problems (customer focus) are trying to be seen by their customers as the Best solution to their problem (not the cheapest), i.e., how to catch more fish. To execute on that the company had to have a thorough knowledge of their customer’s business or in this case the art of fishing. They needed to be the ‘experts’ on the products that their customers use, the type of fish they wanted to catch and the geographic location where they fished. With a limited number of customers, the Value of their services had to be more important than the price customers paid them. Did they come out with innovative products? Yes, but in concert with their customer. Not innovation for innovations sake.
Their Business strategy was to focus on the different ways they could help people (their customer) catch fish anywhere in the world. They started with seminars and quickly learned they couldn’t build a business that way it was too slow. In response they started In-Fisherman magazine. Next, they developed a Multi-Media division with television, radio shows and seminars. Soon to follow was a Products Division, then Sponsorship Division and so on. Their operational (execution strategy) was multi-dimensional but always aligned with their Business and Corporate strategies. They designed new products alongside their customers, they personalized their products and services for different segments of their customer base and became even more immersed in their customers’ business of fishing. FYI, they sold it in 1998.
Let’s take the conversation outside the realm of In-Fisherman and flush out aligned execution with a Customer Focused strategy. Operational processes are focused on responsiveness to customer needs. Company rewards are based on customer satisfaction. Employees are focused on ‘doing the right thing’ for the customer. Rather than a focus on innovation for innovation sake the focus is on personalized services or customized products for customer problems. Sometimes the customer doesn’t really understand they have a problem until presented with a new solution. This comes about because the company is deeply involved in understanding their customers business processes.
Ask yourself this question; as the Leader of your company can you write in three sentences your company’s Corporate strategy (what you want to achieve), your Business Strategy (how you will compete in your marketplace) and your Operational strategy (how you will operationally execute the previous two)?