Sometimes it is easy to be overwhelmed by a detailed strategy paper presented at board level. In my experience, it is infrequent for a board to have a paper that is well-written, succinct and which goes on – after approval – to be executed and deliver the intended outcomes.
There seem to be several things that mean it is a harder exercise than it really should be. These crop up regularly, and you may want to consider if you too have experienced these problems.
1. By far the most common failure is that the strategy presented to board goes no further. Everyone agrees that it is the right thing to do, and then the board moves on to operational matters. The strategy is then ignored for the next 10 months until someone dusts it down, changes the dates, and re-presents it.
It may seem obvious, but a good strategy is about change, and that means making decisions about investments, disinvestments, skills, culture change, alliances and partnerships amongst many other things. The board needs to ensure that the strategy’s management system is fit for purpose and the board’s governance gives weight to examining the changes and outcomes on a regular basis.
2. The most common excuse for a failing strategy is someone repeating Peter Drucker’s famous saying: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, usually with a shrug. I always wonder who approved a strategy that would not work for that organisation’s culture.
A good strategy will be fully aware of the culture: what is good about it and what is not so good. It will design an implementation plan that takes account of that culture and can exploit it to deliver better outcomes. Blaming culture for poor execution is mis-placing the blame, which should be directed at the creation of a strategy that would never work.
3. Be realistic about what you want. At one point, I worked on strategy for a large organisation. As a team of three, we were given very clear goals that the strategy had to address, including expected growth for a particular division. Having looked for a period of weeks at all the options to achieve this aggressive growth trajectory, we concluded that the only possible way to deliver within the short window was to make a very significant acquisition.
The reaction to our plan was to decide this was too hard and that the division would carry on doing what was already being done and hope that this suddenly produced huge growth. Needless to say, it was not successful. As a board, make sure that you are prepared to work through the implications of what you are asking. If it is a goal that you genuinely need to meet, you may have to make some tough decisions. If it isn’t, it should not be asked of your strategy leader.
Strategy remains for me an endlessly fascinating discipline. Well done, it is part science, part art; sometimes informed by flashes of intuition, but mostly by detailed, thoughtful analysis and – almost always – characterised by bold decisions and great execution with unwavering focus.
Michael Bernard
Michael Bernard is a Non-Executive Director, Trustee, Advisory Board Member for Exeter Business School, Strategy Consultant, as well as Author of Creating Strategy: A Practical Guide.
