Turing strategy into results books to help companies create value in the marketplace and thrive

Business strategy guides a company’s decision-making process to achieve competitive advantage. For a company to benefit from its strategy, leaders must be held accountable for getting strategic actions implemented. When an organizational environment is stable and predictable, it means it has been able to realize strategy, and maintain success. A realized strategy is the one that the organization actually follows and focuses on groups within the organization who are responsible for carrying out the strategy in order to sustain long-term benefits for the company. With goal setting, planning, and taking the right actions, companies can significantly improve their ability to create value in the marketplace.

In order to prioritize the most promising initiatives, an organization must know how much value each initiative aims to generate, and the leaders must report progress in executing deliverables and realizing the target value of the initiative. The value may be described in terms of KPIs and may include more value streams. For turning strategy into results, Group50 consulting firm suggests implementing three levels of its Business Hierarchy of Needs ® change management framework, that make up an effective change management process for creating strategy, optimizing the organization, and implementing change.

Laying the foundation for clearly defined strategies

Every organization does the things in the Business Hierarchy of Needs® to some degree. The difference between organizations that have a culture of strategic execution and others who don’t is the disciplined change management methodology they follow. Group50 consulting firm’s CEO Jim Gitney discusses three levels of the Business Hierarchy of Needs® in detail in his Turning Goals into Results book. The first level relates to data analysis and planning, and requires understanding the current state, and laying the foundation for building clearly defined strategies that achieve a defined future state. It adds the most important goals (MIG), leadership traits, and value proposition to mission, vision, and values of an organization. Once strategies have been designed and put in place, identifying strategic gaps and operating gaps, and tactical objectives provide the basis for identifying what needs to be done for turning strategy into results.

Creating a change management plan

The next level 2 of Business Hierarchy of Needs® focuses on setting cascading objectives throughout the organization to deal with operating gaps and strategic gaps. It also defines the required organization structure, skill maps, training requirements, and performance management objectives. Many companies spend a lot of time in level two creating a change management plan and preparing the organization to be successful. Short stepping this level will handicap the organization and jeopardize strategic execution.

Level 3, or implementation level of Business Hierarchy of Needs® requires answering some pertinent questions, which are important for turning strategy into results. Some of the questions that Jim described in his turning goals into results book include the establishment of steering committee, defining project charters, and keeping skill development programs on track. Additionally, the organization should continuously improve business processes, products, and services to meet the needs of the company’s stakeholders.

In his turning goals into results book, titled "Strategy Realized - Business Hierarchy of Needs®" Jim Gitney brings forward his 45 years of experience of working in corporate America. He learned his trade with companies such as GE, Stanley Black & Decker, Sunbeam and over 200 clients ranging from startups to multibillion dollar publicly traded companies.

Integrating delivery across digital, product, and traditional delivery systems

Strategy Works is the latest addition to the toolkit used by Group50 consulting firm that integrates delivery across digital, product, and traditional delivery systems into a single view linked to outcomes and objectives. It provides you with the ability to demonstrate how projects and programs contribute to strategic and operational objectives in near real-time. For turning strategy into results, it is also important to prevent anti-strategy, or situations where well-intentioned employees act against company interests—we’ve explored various causes and effects. Companies can unintentionally encourage well-meaning employees to act against their company’s best interests, whether through an unclear overall business strategy, a lack of information, or even badly designed sales compensation programs.

Supporting its strategic execution efforts

Group 50 also has over 50 workshops and assessments that are part of its Company Physical®, supporting its strategic execution efforts. It contains additional assessments that will enable leaders to understand how processes such as HR practices, Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, Information Technology, Business-IT alignment, etc. are performing. In each assessment, the consultants review the effectiveness of each process from a lean business perspective and best practices. Once an assessment has been done, clients can take advantage of Group50’s planning and implementation workshops in various different functional and operational areas. The workshops are designed to address the findings of an assessment with the key process owners, but in many cases can be standalone.

During my 45 years of corporate and consulting experience with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 50, I have learned what to do and what should never be done from some of the best and worst leaders.