I find it a great privilege to be called into businesses to work with Leaders and their organisations across their Leadership, Culture and Strategy needs.
The truth is – none of these are more important than the other, and we need to find the balance, harness the momentum, and create the systems to deliver on all of these areas to achieve ‘real success’.
Success is one thing, but ‘real success’ is sustained success, and needs everyone engaged, encourages personal and professional growth in its people, and is an environment where everyone is connected to purpose.
All that said, where it all starts in the quest to deliver sustained success is the Strategy System.
The Strategy System is your process for strategy creation and execution that ensures your organisation remains adaptive and responsive in your chosen market.
The Strategy System aligns the whole team to work collaboratively.
It involves:
• creating a one-page Business Plan that is clear and actionable
• cascading goals through to teams and individuals through alignment sessions
• evaluating performance to review progress and to reflect on opportunities for continuous improvement.
The Strategy System fosters transparency and rapid adaptation, resulting in:
• clarity of purpose
• goal alignment
• leadership accountability.
The one-page plan that is created through this process should be reviewed annually but visited quarterly as part of your business planning and budget cycle.
The front page outlines your purpose, values, vision, pillars, goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). The back page lists the priorities driving outcomes in each pillar and the teams within the business who must collaborate to deliver these projects.
Each team member’s KPIs and priorities cascade directly from this plan, and each quarter their progress is tracked in team planning workshops to reflect, reset and reprioritise for the quarter ahead. This process allows the business to remain agile, adjusting the plan as the market shifts while remaining steadfast in your company mission.
The process allows the whole team to have input into the strategy and how they can achieve their own plans. This creates engagement, ownership and accountability throughout the organisation.
Each quarter, the CEO reports back to the business on performance against the goals and targets outlined in the Business Plan; sharing achievements against each pillar and highlighting individuals who demonstrated outstanding effort for reaching key milestones. He or she also communicates their perspective on focus areas for the upcoming quarter.
Read more about my Strategy programs – Align, Achieve and Cascade – here
The above is an excerpt from my book Purpose, Passion & Performance: how systems for leadership, culture and strategy drive the 3Ps of high performing organisations.