“Projects” are certainly vital – a big part of Cisco’s past success came from its power as a ‘serial-acquirer’ of new technologies, each of which was a project. And a white-goods manufacturer recently specified a project process for entering each in a sequence of national markets.  But strategic management is not all about projects – the critical foundation is a robust set of policies for the repeated decisions that keep the plan on track, about pricing, product development, marketing, staffing and so on. Only if this is sound can we embark on the bigger steps that need project discipline.

[1] Executing your Strategy by Mark Morgan, Raymond Levitt and William Malek, Harvard Business School Press.

1. It’s quality of growth that matters, not quantity.
2. Fix and drive the business model, don’t reinvent it.
3. “It’s the system, stupid!” - i.e. the system that delivers performance, not manipulating ratios or firing magic bullets, and needs intensely detailed measurement and tracking – tedious, but essential.
4. Work the plan – in detail.

Not ‘transforming’, not sexy, but great common sense. Many organizations would do well to follow similar principles.

Three Keys to Effective Execution at least makes the point that great strategy is no use if it is not implemented well and fast. Unfortunately, the advice is a bit too self-evident and general to be helpful – you should [a] maintain your focus [b] develop tracking systems and [c] set up formal reviews.

Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance reports research on the large gap between hoped-for and realised results from strategic plans, and offers some rules to close the gap – good-enough pointers, if again rather self-evident and generic:

1. Keep it simple, make it concrete
2. Debate assumptions, not forecasts
3. Use a rigorous framework, speak a common language
4. Discuss resource deployments early
5. Clearly identify priorities
6. Continuously monitor performance
7. Develop and reward execution capabilities

I particular, it’s clearly a great idea to use rigorous frameworks and speak a common language – but the strategy field offers no such rigor, so not clear where the authors think this will come from.  

Transforming Corner-Office Strategy into Frontline Action urges creating a “memorable and actionable phrase that distills a company’s corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it across an organization”. This will, it is claimed focus everyone in an organization–executives and line managers alike–on the same strategic objectives. Unfortunately, the article offers no idea on how any of those folk are supposed to work out what to do, when and how much, and link with what everyone else is doing, to deliver performance outcomes.

Promise-based Management claims that the essence of execution lies in the commitments people make to colleagues and customers. Important, of course, but ‘the essence’ of strategy? There’s no clue how folk are supposed to work out what exactly to commit to.  

Here’s a puzzle, though – this and tons of other good advice has been around for ever, and read by just about every decent senior executive. So how come we continue to see weak and disastrous strategies like those that drove the current recession?

1. Don’t skip rigorous analysis.
2. Don’t think strategy can be built in a day.
3. Take care to link strategic planning to strategy execution.
4. Make sure to hold robust strategy review meetings.

This may all seem verypedestrian in these exciting times of strategic innovation and reinventing your business model – but no less critical than it always was.

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