This is one of the slides from our workshop Strategic Planning for Leaders. This session was recently facilitated as a training session about strategic planning rather than a small group facilitation session where crafting a strategic plan was the outcome.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 R. Timothy S. Breene, Paul F. Nunes and Walter E. Shill in the Harvard Business Review article The Chief Strategy Officer (2007) suggest the strategy must be clarified “for every business unit and function, ensuring that all employees understand the details of the strategic plan and how their work connects to corporate goals.”
Later they observe, “CSO’s (chief strategy officers) must drive decision making that sustains organizational change. A strategy that is clear one day can become fuzzy the next as people and competitive environments change. Alignment can bend and then break if it is not continually reinforced. Chief strategy executives…. must be that person who, in the CEO’s stead, can walk into anyone’s office and test whether the decisions being made are aligned with the strategy and are creating the desired results.”
Three questions:
1. Does your CEO serve as your chief strategy officer for execution? If so, is this really the appropriate role for them at your organization (some argue that enterprise leaders have a different role from strategy leaders)?
2. Does your CFO or CIO (insert any other chief officer here such as chief people officer) truly serve as a strategic leader or are they serving in more of an high-authority functional role?
3. Does your business have a person who truly is driving strategic execution but their business card does not say chief strategy officer?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Examine the list, maybe even check it twice. Can you pinpoint the chief reason your strategy may not be getting traction? Of course it is possible that there may be multiple derailers that need to be identified and addressed. Take it as a challenge – pick one to get started. What needs to be done to get forward movement to overcome this derailer?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011