Effective Strategic Execution: Cascade

During a keynote address at IIR’s Balanced Scorecard Forum, Robert Kaplan, a leading international business management guru, revealed “that less than 10% of formulated strategies are executed effectively” and an international survey indicated that consistently executing strategic objectives were in the top three concerns of CEO’s and corporate boards. Kaplan also added “that it is a well know fact that organizations who have a formal strategy execution process dramatically outperform the rest”. Effectively and consistently implementing corporate strategy requires all stakeholders to be aligned to those objectives, understand their role in achieving them and be accountable for effective implementation. If your company doesn’t have a formal process, then the hard work is figuring out what one looks like. A strategic execution process must be able to:

• Provide senior leaders with a clear view of how the strategy is being executed throughout the organization
• Give stakeholders the ability to communicate their progress to leadership and a clear view of corporate priorities
• Be interactive
• Provide simple to understand dashboards
• Be self sustaining

Systems such as Cascade, provide senior leaders with these features, are easy to implement and provide a significant ROI. These system also provide the fundamental framework for consistently executing strategy, but there is more work to be done within the organization to make strategic execution self-sustaining. We have developed the Business Hierarchy of Needs^® as food for thought on the basic steps required to make strategic execution and organizational excellence sustainable. Effectively implementing corporate strategy isn’t that difficult if the leadership team has a well thought through plan, a performance management tool like Cascade and a recipe to follow such as the Business Hierarchy of Needs. It requires work and commitment to those objectives and a “we can always be better” mentality.

About Group50 and the author: Group50’s focus is on performance management in manufacturing and distribution. Jim Gitney, the author and CEO of Group50 has worked with organizations of every size to help them realize their potential in the marketplace. You can request more information here, or call (909) 949-9083 for more information. To see the services that Group50 provides, go to our home page at www.group50.com.

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