Strategy + tactics I want it all I want it all I want it all, and I want it now Queen, I Want It All If a company is not a garage startup, it has customers to serve, processes to perform, short-term targets to reach, and KPIs to fulfill. And the company must do it day by day. So even if it has a new strategy, it doesn't mean it can stop performing daily.
But when a new strategy appears, it brings changes. Strategy always means transformation; otherwise, nobody needs it.
So, ordinary workers and middle managers face a challenge:
- To do their work as best as they can, spend less, and deliver more, and, at the same time:
- To change their working practices on the go.
Can even the best car racer improve their vehicle and at the same minute take part in a race?
It is not a new problem. And there are many ways to solve it. But a company can solve it only when leaders send the right signals and change their approach to evaluating short-term results.
The curse of quarterly reports "On the back of the quarterly report, the XYZ company's stock plummeted." Have you ever read such headlines? It is a nightmare for a CEO.
And as long as we stick to this dangerous paradigm, we'll have difficulties implementing our strategies.
Some years ago, I conducted a strategic project. I helped a car spare parts wholesaler devise a new strategy. When we finished our job, everybody seemed happy, including the founder, who was a CEO at the same time. But three or four months later, when I called one of the top executives to ask how things were going, she told me that they hadn't even begun to implement the strategy.
They had a meeting, and the CEO said that their new strategy was certainly great, but it didn't cancel out the task of making money here and now. At that moment, the company faced some financial troubles due to external turbulence. And the CEO said that the strategy should be "put on hold." He believed the team should "patch all the leaks" first and only then switch their intention to long-term tasks.
Doing new things implies conflicts and mistakes Strategy means changes.
Changes mean doing things a company hasn't done before.
And this, in turn, means conflicts between old and new tasks and mistakes.
So, when your team's implementing a new strategy, you need to evaluate day-to-day results differently than when massive changes are not on the agenda.
Your quarter results may be (temporarily) worse than expected. Your team members may seem to underperform. Your company may not meet all the targets on time. However, it is the price for changes for the better.
My son works for a large European IT company. Three years ago, the firm's leaders realized it was time to transition from good old programs installed on users' computers to cloud versions. It was not just a change but a tectonic shift. C-suite managers had to turn the enterprise inside out — to change thousands of procedures, to retrain many people.
The company ended up in the red for two years due to these changes. But leaders found a way to explain it to the shareholders, and now the company is profitable again.
I am sure strategies mostly fail because of the leaders' unrealistic expectations. They need to tolerate some mistakes on the way to strategic goals.
But suppose the leaders continue to hammer into the heads of inferiors that they must achieve brilliant operational results while executing the strategy. In that case, the strategy will take a back seat in the minds of subordinates.
Strategy is about the future, after all. So they can attend to it later.
Conclusion Some experts see a solution through thorough planning. They believe that if we cascade or break down our strategic goals into objectives and operational tasks, it will increase the chance that the company will achieve its strategic goals.
It doesn't work this way.
Careful planning is helpful. But give me a task to create a spacecraft for three weeks, and I will break it down into subtasks in a few minutes. Even a completely unrealistic goal can be cascaded down to a day-to-day routine.
Other experts believe a company should thoroughly calculate resources before making strategic decisions. I have some doubts about that, either. The future is unpredictable, so the future resources are incalculable.
There are two ways to handle the problem:
- Some companies separate operational activities and strategic development. Some people in another office work on strategic projects until they are ready to be scaled across the company.
- Others encourage staffers to embrace and implement changes, and their leaders tolerate minor alterations in operating results.
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Svyatoslav Biryulin