At Six Disciplines, we encourage business leaders and all team members to look at business planning horizons using this inverted pyramid chart.

Beginning with Mission and Values, which should be decided upon early in the strategic planning process – and should be designed to last for decades.

Next is the organization’s Strategic Position, which should be the articulated as the ability to build and sustain a product or service offering that is different than that of your competition, and should be designed to last 10+ years.

Similarly, the Vision should be designed to describe how your organization will look like in 10 years, in pursuing the mission and strategic position.

Next, the Long-Term Goals of the organization (also known as the “Vital Few Objectives”) look out 3-5 years, and 1-Year Company Goals are expressed in a balanced scorecard-like fashion (with specific measures, deadlines, assigned accountability) in the categories of financial, customer, production and people.

Individual Plans are created on a quarterly basis, indicating projects, tasks and activities that each person will do in order to support the company goals.

BOTTOMLINE: It all comes down to Today….what are you doing – TODAY – to support the organization’s goals, in order to fulfill its Long-Term Goals, Vision, Mission and Values?

The Lord’s Prayer has 50 words.

The Ten Commandments have 297 words.

The Constitution of the United States of America has 4,500 words.

How many words does your organization’s operations manual have? How about your mission, vision, values statement? How about your strategic position?

Perhaps even more importantly – how many of your organization’s team members have ever even read your mission, vision, values, and strategic position?

Do they even know where to find it?

BOTTOMLINE: It’s not enough to simplify and make every word count when it comes to your organization’s mission, vision, values and strategic position. Make them available to everyone in your organization – constantly. Make your mission, vision, values, and strategic position always available on every team member’s desktop. It’s a great way to continually remind and align team members to your organization’s strategy. And to execute accordingly.

Building company-wide accountability is a key element to making a business sustainable over a long period of time. Not surprisingly, all high-performing organizations are moving toward more empowerment, enlightenment — and building their own organizational accountability.

So what is accountability? To some, it’s something you make people do, as in “making people accountable.” But as long as you think accountability can be purchased, mandated, or motivated, you’re trapped in trying to create accountability — where it may not be possible.

Let’s consider what accountability is, and how we can build an organizational culture that encourages it.

Be definition, accountability is being answerable or responsible for something. Accountability opens the door to ownership – not necessarily financial ownership — but certainly emotional ownership, where someone acknowledges they’re responsible for some aspect of the organization.

Accountability is not something you “make” people do. It has to be chosen, accepted or agreed upon by people within your organization. People must “buy into” being accountable and responsible. For many, this is a new, unfamiliar, and sometimes, uncomfortable way to work. Most importantly: individual purpose and meaning comes from accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable.

To learn to be accountable means coming to grips with an element of discipline. Accountability is the opposite of permissiveness. Holding people accountable is really about the distribution of power and choice. When people have more choice, they are more responsible. When they become more responsible, they can have more freedom. When they are more accountable, they understand their purpose and role within the organization and are committed to making things happen.

So, how do you build organization-wide accountability?

Only organizations that can clearly identify, articulate, and execute their strategic goals are well-positioned to be able to build company-wide accountability. To effectively achieve these goals, companies must measure and manage actual business performance against these goals in a highly coordinated manner.

A six-step framework to build company-wide accountability is to:

1. Decide What’s Important (develop an authentic mission, vision, values, strategic position)
2. Set Goals That Lead (planning that includes measures, targets, projects)
3. Align Systems (streamline processes and resources so all resources support the goals)
4. Work the Plan (assure and measure so that each employee’s plans and activities support the goals)
5. Innovate Purposefully (get to root causes quicker, make quicker and more informed decisions)
6. Step Back (assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, appraise performance results)

Building company-wide accountability requires not only a systematic method based on proven best-practices. It also requires technologies that make the framework practical to use and implement on a daily, weekly, monthly quarterly and annual basis. In addition, it takes a certified business coach to hold you and your organization accountable and to help these cultural changes to “stick” – to make it last. In the end, it takes an organization that is ready and able to accept accountability, and to benefit from the ownership and the freedom that comes with organizational accountability.

Accountability and positive organizational change come through a new set of conversations.

Start having these conversations in your organization - today.

Creating a strong strategy for an organization is not an easy task. It takes several of the organization’s leaders to articulate and agree on vision and direction.

Yet, of the two, execution is much harder, as it requires the activity of every person, every day.

Here are five tips for strategy formulation:

1. Analyze the current situation. Determining where your organization stands is an important first step that some leaders take for granted. Ask yourself, “Where are we now?” At a bare minumum, conduct a SWOT analysis.
2. Set a clear strategic direction. Use mission and vision statements to articulate direction, then set out an action plan for how to reach them.
3. Develop a small set of initiatives. Outline 3-5 key change initiatives that support the organization’s goals and assign them to key employees to execute.
4. Establish a detailed action plan – for everyone. An individual plan for every employee, one that is reviewed between employee and team leaders weekly, gives everyone status updates and enough time for corrective action in the case that goals are at risk. Include measures for monitoring progress.
5. Align the organization. Execution of strategy requires every person, every day. Make sure you disseminate the strategy to all employees. How can they execute on it, if they’re not continually aware of what’s really important?

Now that strategy has been formulated, two key tips for implementing the strategy:

1. Execute relentlessly. The individual plan for each person needs to be reviewed daily, time needs to be spent on activities that support the initiatives, and corrective measures need to take place as early as possible, so you can course-correct quickly.
2. Monitor, measure and learn. Monitor key measures along the way, find and correct errors early and quickly, and learn from your mistakes.

Simply put, the focus and capability of an organization can be understood in two dimensions: strategy (deciding what to do) and execution (getting it done). Leaders who build organizations with strong execution over long periods of time achieve enduring excellence. The combination of strategy (the choices of what we do versus what not to do) and execution (how well the choices are carried out) becomes the field upon which the Execution Revolution occurs in any given company.

The figure above shows a model of these dimensions using four quadrants of performance:

Quadrant I: Strong Strategy/Weak Execution: In this quadrant, a business has a strong strategy, which typically means a competitive advantage. This advantage can come from offering premium products or services, availability or price. It can be rooted in technology, distribution channels, manufacturing expertise or current customer base. Regardless of whether a company is a start-up or a seasoned business, strong strategy usually leads to growth in sales. A key point to understand is that success and the results of growth start the journey – but this often leads an organization (and its leadership) into Quadrant IV.

Quadrant IV:Strong Execution/Weak Strategy: A company in Quadrant IV usually gets there because it is experiencing the pains of growth. Quite often, sales have outpaced capacity, so leadership becomes focused on strengthening internal operations to address quality, scheduling, hiring, training, customer service, order processing and other issues. In other words, the movement into Quadrant IV is a natural reaction to success in Quadrant I.

Quadrant III: Weak Strategy/Weak Execution: It’s easy for a company to operate in Quadrant III for quite a while before leadership really accepts they are there. The shift into this state of weakness results from gradual decline in growth and profitability, caused by decisions made (or not made) a year or two earlier. In Quadrant III businesses are usually overworked, confused and eventually have a feeling of hopelessness if the issues are not addressed. Typically, the best exit plan for moving out of Quadrant III is to aggressively reallocate resources from low-profitability areas to the growth areas. This sounds easy, but most organizations don’t have the framework, the will or the persistence to make the hard choices it requires.

Quadrant II: Strong Strategy/Strong Execution: Quadrant II is all about balancing growth with profitability and performing predictably. This requires a disciplined organization, one that’s able to execute well enough to address the needs of today and build for tomorrow at the same time. Admittedly, Quadrant II performance is difficult to sustain. Few companies are able to achieve this kind of performance for long periods of time.

BOTTOMLINE: This is what the Execution Revolution is all about: the process of changing the game with regard to enduring excellence by focusing on how to plan and execute strategy more effectively while successfully managing the surprises along the way.

Occasionally, circumstance and progress in seemingly unrelated areas combine to create an opportunity for solving old problems in new and exciting ways.

One of those breakthrough periods is upon us now, with regard to strategy execution.

This inflection point has developed primarily because large corporations have made huge investments developing best practices for effective management, strong leadership and strategy execution.

Built upon the results of these efforts, we believe the coming Execution Revolution will result in an order-of-magnitude change in cost that will allow small to midsized businesses not only to catch up, but to actually leapfrog, larger organizations in their execution management capabilities.

This is what the Execution Revolution is all about.

Leaders of small and mid-sized businesses now have an opportunity to go from almost no system to a new category in the excellence industry – a complete strategy execution program that puts everything needed for a balanced strategy execution together in one affordable combination.

The business excellence methodology component of this program is detailed in Gary Harpst’s first book, Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last.

BOTTOMLINE:

• Conditions are currently right to approach strategy execution in a radical new way.
• Seven key areas of business improvement advancements are fueling the Execution
  Revolution:
  1. Quality Programs
  2. Business Process Best Practices
  3. Personal Productivity Tools
  4. Business Intelligence
  5. Strategy Formulation
  6. Virtual Community Development
  7. Business Coaching

(Excerpted from Chapter 4, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, by Gary Harpst)

In researching how to build a sustainable strategy execution program, we’ve uncovered three major barriers that have to be overcome if the program is to be successful. They are insufficient expertise, prohibitive economics and simple human nature. We’ve determined that these three barriers are actually the major design requirements any truly effective strategy execution program must be able to address.

The Expertise Hurdle: To produce lasting results, any complete strategy execution program has to somehow help the organizations that use it to cope with the wide range of expertise required to employ the appropriate best practices that are available. It must also help these organizations recognize that this body of knowledge will keep growing and changing.

The Economics Hurdle: Clearly, any strategy execution program developed for small and midsized businesses must consider how to deliver the expertise and technology required at an economic level that these organizations can afford. The only way this can be achieved is by integrating these essential components of the program – in a complete solution – and deliver them using an innovative model.

The Human Nature Hurdle: Now, for the toughest hurdle of all: people. One of the most persistent challenges we face as humans is to narrow the gap between knowing what needs to be done, and actually doing what needs to be done. Another dimension of human nature that needs to be considered is resistance to change. Most of us resist change, unless it’s our own idea.

BOTTOMLINE:

• In order to build a sustainable strategy execution program in small and midsized businesses, three major barriers or hurdles need to be overcome: insufficient expertise, prohibitive economics and simple human nature.
• While larger companies have knowledgeable people with the necessary expertise in business improvement disciplines, small and midsized organizations don’t have equal
  access to such a wide array of expertise.
• Developing mastery in even just one business improvement discipline requires a substantial investment. None of this comes cheap, and there are no shortcuts.
• Any strategy execution program developed for small and midsized businesses must consider how to deliver the expertise and technology required in a way that makes sense economically for these enterprises. The only way this kind of change in economics can be achieved is by integrating the essential components of such a program into a complete solution and delivering them using an innovative distribution
  model.
• One of the most persistent challenges we face as humans is to narrow the gap between knowing what needs to be done and actually doing what needs to be done.
• Other human nature hurdles to overcome include our resistance to change, our unique differences, our need to communicate effectively and our need for purpose in our lives, including meaningful work.

(Excerpted from Chapter 5, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, by Gary Harpst)

Why is strategy execution so difficult?

Why do we know what to do, but don’t always do it? Doing what we know we should requires someone who will keep us on track, to teach, direct and encourage us to do the things we know we should do – the difficult things that we rarely, if ever, follow through to the finish, if left to our own devices.

While the majority of us have one or more “specialties”, the majority of us just don’t know how to put together all the key steps of strategy, planning, organizational alignment, execution management, innovation and organizational learning.

BOTTOMLINE: Strategy execution is hard for a variety of reasons, but it’s not rocket science.

• The majority of us don’t know how to put together all the key steps of strategy, planning, organizational alignment, execution management, innovation and organizational learning.
• Often, we fall into the trap of outside-in thinking, and need to focus on internal things
  rather than worrying about issues outside of our control.
• We need to keep in mind the control factor: regardless of how well we perform as a business, there are many factors to success we cannot control.
• Sometimes, it’s easier not to do what we know we should do.
• As ironic as it may seem, there is a growth paradox: the organization that’s good at
  solving today’s challenges will create a new and bigger set of challenges for itself tomorrow.
• It’s critical that organizations continually work on increasing their capacity to execute.

(Excerpted from Chapter 3, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, by Gary Harpst)

Creating organizational cultures don’t just happen by chance.

Indeed, the innovative folks over at 37 Signals argue that “You Don’t Create A Culture” at all.

According to37 Signals:

“You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, and you give them the freedom to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust then trust will be built into your culture.”

So, if you encourage and reward something (for example, an attitude or behavior) – on a consistent basis – it gets build into your organization’s culture.

Sharing, trust, cooperation, engagement – whatever your organization has as its core values – must be encourage, recognized and rewarded, in order for it to become built into your culture.

Same goes for execution. If you value “getting the right things done” – consistently, predictably and in a balanced way, you need to encourage it, recognize it and reward it consistently over time.

BOTTOMLINE: Start today by creating your own “culture of execution”. Determine what shared core values your organization has relative to getting things done, align your resources to do so, and begin to recognize and reward attitudes and behaviors (results, not just activities) that reinforce the kind of execution culture you want your organization to have.

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge offers up this interview with HBS professor Robert S. Kaplan, one of the original creators of the Balanced Scorecard in 1992.

Key take-aways from their latest research:

• Companies often manage strategy in fits and starts.
• Though executives may formulate an excellent strategy, it easily fades from memory as the organization tackles day-to-day operations issues, or what most think of as “fighting fires.”
• Strategy forumulation needs to be a continual process – not an annual event.
• Senior management teams needs to have regular, probably monthly, meetings that focus only on strategy.
• Companies need a formal process for using strategic objectives to set priorities for where operational improvements can have the largest impact on strategy execution.
• A complete strategy execution system schedules strategy review meetings at a different time from operational review meetings, so that each meeting has its own frequency, agenda, information system, and participation.
• Creating a strategy map and scorecard for that strategy is the logical and proven next step for putting the strategy into action.

Kaplan also reveals the “six strategy execution stages”:

1. Stage 1: The CEO leads the change agenda and drives it from the top to reinforce the mission, values and vision. Leadership sets the ambitious vision and stretch targets.
2. Stage 2: The executive leader validates the strategy map as an expression of the strategy articulated in Stage 1 and challenges the organization with stretch targets that take all employees outside their comfort zones.
3. Stage 3: Leadership drives alignment of organizational units and is essential for communicating vision, values, and strategy to all employees.
4. Stage 4: Leadership supports the cross-organizational unit process improvements.
5. Stage 5: the leader’s openness and skill in running the strategy management review meeting determines its effectiveness for fine-tuning the strategy throughout the year.
6. Stage 6: The leader must allow even a well-formulated and executed strategy to be challenged in light of new external circumstances, data collected about the performance of the existing strategy, and new suggestions from employees throughout the organization. Being willing to welcome and subject existing business strategies to fact-based challenges is one of the hallmarks of effective leadership.