3 Questions That Will Set You Up For Future Strategic Success
Assessing the success of your strategic goals is key to creating new strategies, writes Rebecca Homkes, who offers three key questions.
How did we do? Was our strategy successful this year?
It’s a critical question to ask at year’s end, especially as you gear up to kick off the next cycle, but shockingly few teams know the answer to that question. Others ask, but they have varying views. Most organizations are fairly adept at tracking plans, reviewing dashboards and conducting business plan reviews. However, knowing how well the strategy and growth are working is usually lacking.
Teams that conduct assessments often make another mistake in only asking how well they executed the plan. When gathering to review progress, the tempting question to start the meeting with is: Are we on track to plan? It’s a comforting question, as we like to be tracking, but starting a review meeting with that question makes a set of assumptions: there was only one track, we got it right the first time, and the situation has not changed. It’s hard to name an industry for which those assumptions hold this year!
Plans are not bad, per se, but when it comes to growth strategy, we want to shift from planning mode to preparation mode, where we make decisions based on beliefs, are ok with directions over destinations and sometimes need to track towards milestones rather than precise metrics.
Viewing your strategy only as a plan to implement also moves the team into heads-down tracking mode. In a volatile and changing environment, this is a dangerous place to be: we need to be in heads-up learning mode.
More simply, just asking about the plan tracking misses the role of the assessment: we want to know how well we do strategy. As you reflect on your strategy at the end of each year, consider asking three simple, powerful questions:
1. Did we get it right?
This assesses how well your team called the situation correctly. When your team reviewed the strategic situation and the top trends most shaping the environment at the beginning of the cycle, how well did you call out the most critical trends? When you articulated your stances or beliefs on these trends, how clear and robust were your beliefs? Did you pull out the right assumptions to test and track your beliefs? Without these, we are unable to adapt in a way that maintains alignment. Did you assess the evolving situation in a clear enough way to know how to chart a course to compete and win?
Key takeaway: How strong is your team’s strategic scoping?
2. Did we choose it right?
That is, after we articulated our critical strategic beliefs, did we set the right priorities to win in this environment? Were these the appropriate priorities to target? Really challenge yourselves: were you focusing on the true, needle-moving priorities or did operational tactics, business as usual or pet projects make their way onto the list of to-dos? Also, assess your scoping.
The priorities could be theoretically the right ones, but scoped so widely that every activity any team member wanted to do technically lived within them? Did you set a list of narrowly defined, winnable priorities, or did these become big buckets of activities? Remember, the more priorities you fight, the fewer of them you will win.
Key takeaway: How strong is your team’s strategic prioritization?
3. Did we do it right?
When it comes to executing these priorities, how well did you do in making them happen? Were the metrics the right ones to track, and if so, did you meet them? Did you adjust as you went, or did you pull back on metrics when you fell behind? What about resourcing? Did you provide your priorities with the critical time, treasure and talent they needed to succeed? Did your processes and governance enhance agility or hinder it?
Key takeaway: How strong is your execution discipline?
Check how much you agree as a team by assigning a score of one to five for each one, but also be clear on the why behind the rating. Align on your strengths and gaps. Most teams have a clear competitive advantage in one of these three areas, and a glaring weakness in another. Most importantly, agree on what you will adjust next year to further boost your strategy and growth capability.
We are operating in a fast-changing world where the unknowns of the future can feel greater than the established knowns. The winners are not the ones who can diligently implement a plan; they are the teams that outperform in assessing a changing situation, prioritizing a short list of goals to win in this environment and executing in a way that balances alignment of activities and resources with strategy, coordination across the organization and adaptation as the situation changes.
Your competitive environment is changing: it is time to adjust how you holistically assess your ability to win within it.
Written by: Rebecca Homkes, a high-growth strategy specialist, CEO, and executive advisor, for SmartBrief.