Introducing the Analogic framework for business planning applications
Getting Strategy into Action with Interrelationship Maps and Execution Processes
1. STRATEGY EXECUTION
→ GETTING STRATEGY INTO ACTION
→ FOCUSING ON INTERRELATIONSHIPS
→ EVOLVING STRATEGY QUICKLY
IN SCALE-UP STAGE TECHNOLOGY BUSINESSES
NOVEMBER 9, 2021
DAVE LITWILLER
2. INTRODUCTION
• A common, overly simplistic view of strategy execution
• More realistic strategy maps of interrelationships
• Strategy execution process
• Blending top-down and bottom-up views
• Tools to help identify and understand causality and
interrelationships beyond the superficial
• Select examples
3. • A classic waterfall view to
drive strategy execution
• Provides a quick summary:
• Strategy
• Context
• Main influences
SIMPLIFIED VIEW
• Common weaknesses of this high-level depiction:
A triumph of simplicity and brevity over a more useful model of reality
Too little attention given to interrelationships, assumptions,
dependencies, and the cascading effects of change
4. STRATEGY MAP –
VIEW OF INTERRELATIONSHIPS
Business objectives
connected by cause-
and-effect logic
Balanced
Scorecard
5. CAUSAL LINKAGES –
MFG. EXAMPLE
Customer
Customer Retention – x & up-sell New Customer Acquisition
Workforce Training
15. • Input Metrics: Controllable, day-to-day behaviours
• Things that done right, bring about desired results in output metrics
• Tend toward leading indicators
• Output Metrics: Results that matter for the business
• Lagging indicators
INPUT METRICS VS.
OUTPUT METRICS
17. ASSESSING A SUITE
OF GOALS AND KPIs
• Does it:
• Clearly define what constitutes business excellence?
• Provide the information required to set aggressive yet
achievable strategic objectives?
• Accurately portray progress, and probability of achieving
upcoming milestones?
• Identify the root causes of barriers?
• Focus the organization on the priority improvement needs?
• Drive the behavior and actions required to achieve the
objectives?
• Align with the mission and values?
26. WRAP-UP: STRATEGY
EXECUTION LEVERAGE POINTS
• Explicitly stating assumptions and interdependencies
• Building cross-functional knowledge
• Investing the time discussing the cascade of interrelated change
• Focusing as much on tactics and relationships as on goals and
objectives
• The How, as much as the What is to be achieved
• The interfaces, internally and externally
• Discussing rationale and context, to align frames of reference
• Getting down to what people can directly control or strongly
influence in day-to-day actions
• Limiting the number of goals & objectives to the fewest & most
important, to bound the complexity of interrelationships and
interdependencies
• Integrating strategy execution with regular operations, in part
through operating planning, budgeting, periodic business reviews
and linkages to leadership development
27. WRAP-UP: STRATEGY
EXECUTION
Tips:
• Maintain strong market focus and customer centricity
• It is easy to overemphasize inward looking issues
• It takes time and customization to get the sustained value
from this (or any) strategy execution framework
• It requires data, much of which must roll up from daily and
weekly dashboards in routine operations to be tractable
• Managing the yin-yang of competing forces to sufficiently
reflect the complexity of any sizeable enterprise
• Many of the causality arrows are at least somewhat
bidirectional, not purely unidirectional
• Iteration and successive refinement are the norm, not the
exception
28. WRAP-UP: STRATEGY
EXECUTION
Tips:
• The strategy, strategy map, goals and KPIs will change over time,
and need to be maintained
• All assertions are really just hypotheses
• Ongoing validation and revision are obligatory
• Innovation is inextricably about experimentation, both in what to
make, and how to make it
• Nothing stands still, internally or externally
• Most progress comes from the cumulation of individually small
improvements
• Implicit is that there is a functioning risk management process
• Otherwise, plans can get derailed too frequently, limiting the value of
the process
• Little happens without accountable individuals, a shared will to win,
and deadlines
29. IMAGE CREDITS
• “Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work,” Harvard
Business Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993
• “Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic
Management System,” Harvard Business Review, July-
Aug. 2007
• https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/bio16610w18/cha
pter/balanced-scorecard/
• https://augurian.com/blog/saas-metrics/
30. FURTHER
DISCUSSION
For further dialog about how to get more strategic intent into
action, and to increase the rate of strategic evolution in
scale-up stage tech businesses:
dave.litwiller@communitech.ca