Strategy roadmap:
Seamless strategy making
for flawless performance
Ensuring organisational performance buy-in through collaborative strategy roadmapping
Introduction and Purpose of the Article
Why is it that the word “strategy” is overused daily in company boardrooms yet few people can write a useable strategy, or facilitate the development of one for their organisation? Why is it that the concept of “strategy” is introduced in many daily social conversations yet few people can even develop a one-page written strategy about their own personal life plans?
One possible answer is that many people have a vague understanding of the dictionary concept of strategy or tactics but daily practice shows that many people have no clue how strategy is developed or implemented. In the business sector all organisations talk strategy but many do not actually have a written strategy with a clear framework on how to implement, monitor, and report organisational performance. So for organisations, the question is no longer “What is strategy?” Rather, it is “How do we successfully develop and execute a strategy that does not gather dust on office shelves?”
The other mystery is that even in strategy-devoted organisations, the practice of developing and executing strategy is still an exclusive domain of leadership and the office of strategy. Why is it that most organisational members do not actively
participate in developing, executing and reporting strategy execution? One answer is that many are just excluded from organisational strategy discourse. If excluded in the development of strategy, it is highly unlikely for the same people to be interested in the execution and reporting of strategy performance. The other reason is that strategy creation is considered a specialised and complicated exercise best left to a few organisational experts. It is time we start to demystify strategy development and execution at personal and institutional levels in order to deal with increasing complexity that surrounds us in our daily lives.
Management is a messy job. Yet organisational survival depends on superior, flawless performance. Without a clear strategic framework to work from, managers have a torrid experience figuring out how to improve the fortunes of their organisations. Flawless performance is an outcome of a planned, practical strategy that facilitates the orderly implementation of organisational goals and objectives. As a matter of practice, we design organisational strategy in poetry, but manage those institutions in prose, or messiness. The purpose of this article is to offer a transparent, collaborative, and participatory model of developing organisational strategy that ensures flawless organisational performance. The author argues that flawless organisational performance and strategy execution are possible only when strategy creation becomes the business of every organisational member. Those who design it are its best implementers. People understand and support what they originate. In general, organisational members voluntarily participate in processes and systems they contribute in formulating.
Some of the reasons strategy documents gather dust in corporate offices, or why few people show enthusiasm in organisational strategy execution is that organisational members just do not understand it. They are either excluded, or brought into the process too late to appreciate the importance and role of strategy in their day-to-day tasks. The aim of this article is to present a simplified Strategy Roadmap that demonstrates and traces clear steps in developing seamless strategy that helps organisational members achieve flawless organisational performance. This Strategy Roadmap is a metaphor and illustration that provides critical stations and components along the road to help organisational leaders and practitioners understand and develop a competence to collaboratively envision, develop, implement, measure and report on organisational performance. The four critical questions that will assist in developing a people-based Strategy Roadmap are:
• What are four critical questions we ought to ask about our organisational intent or strategy?
• What are critical outputs and tasks to be performed at each station of the Strategy Roadmap?
• Who should do what at each station of the Strategy Roadmap?
• How do we implement and measure organisational performance through the Strategy Roadmap?
These critical Strategy Roadmap impact questions are an invitation to help each organisational member understand the reason for engaging in strategy creation; clarify roles and tasks for members and departments; then how each member can actually engage in strategy creation and develop a competence in flawless organisational performance. As a metaphor, a Roadmap is a predictable model, a plan, a strategy. It has a starting point and a destination, with marked stations to stop and r eflect along the way. It is a public, transparent and open plan that anyone can use. Organisations that boast of superior performance are generally distinguished by a solid, clear, simple and transparent strategy that is understood and used by its members. A simple framework to present a complicated strategy is to develop a one-page mental model that highlights starting points and destinations, and clear stations for reviews along the way.
The GH Strategy Roadmap above, figure 1) is an
attempt to do just that – present a coherent strategy Roadmap to success. Below the model follows a description on how it works, roles of leadership, strategy facilitators, and organisational members. Strategy is leadership. Thus strategy-making is a leadership sponsored process that generates organisation-wide collaboration and participation in which everyone determines their individual roles and understand how they contribute to the whole. The Strategy facilitator can use this Strategy Roadmap to help individuals or organisational teams develop their strategy. Ensuring wide participation in strategy development engenders measurable buy-in, corporate monitoring, and reporting performance of goals, objectives and targets.
The Conceptual Framework of the GH Strategy Roadmap
How to Navigate the GH Strategy Roadmap
The Strategy Roadmap has four stations, each clearly guided by a specific directional impact question everybody should answer for themselves to remain relevant and included in their participation on the strategy journey. By answering these station impact questions, organisational members automatically get clarity on roles, critical tasks, and outputs required at each station for the success at the destination. Each station impact question, tasks and outputs generate clarity that guarantees the success at the next station. Success or failure at first station has a domino effect on the achievement at all subsequent stations of the Roadmap. Below we trace the logical steps in turn, and at each station.
Station One: Clarification of Reason For Being
Why are we in this business?
Station One impact question is an existential question probing membership to critically ponder the reason for the existence of their business or chosen
endeavour. We have already said strategy is leadership. Processing this first impact question is a leadership role. This is a fateful question that determines final cumulative outcomes at the last station of the journey. If adequately processed, three impact outputs at this first station are; an organisational vision statement; mission statement; core values-principles statement
1. Clear articulation of organisational vision-mission and values statements sets the tone for the performance culture; organisational niche business; and the brand the organisation will get to be known for. At this first station leadership sounds a clarion call to rally members behind a powerful strategic business direction, with clear intended character of the organisation’s people, culture, and it’s branding. At this first station the Chief Executive Officer of the organisation ought to be the captain and top leader. They can hire the services of a facilitator, but they still need to be in driver’s seat, and in the room when those outputs are created.
The expected results from the vision, mission and values-principles statement are three distinct outcomes; the Master Goal; Organisational Priorities, and Strategic Objectives for the coming 3-5 years. The Master Goal is a long-term inspirational landmark. It is a brief terminal statement that says “By year X this organisation will have achieved Y impact in the business of doing Z”
2. For Organisational Priorities, leadership will articulate a few (3-6) critical areas in which the organisation will excel to bring about its uniqueness or profitability. Strategic Objectives are the task anchors that bring specificity to the qualitative and quantitative aspirations of the Master Goal.
The strategic objectives spell out deliverables to be achieved from the prioritised areas in the Master Goal. With that critical task at Station One, leadership will have determined the fate
of the organisation by mapping out and clearly projecting an unambiguous line of sight to the final destination on the strategy road. Right from the start, staff understands the reason for existence of the organisation in which they have chosen to be members; what business they are in; and what will they achieve by when.
Organisational members will also get clarity and buy-in on how those intended achievements are organised for success; and finally, what sort of organisational character and culture will they work in. At that point leadership has completed their task and they can hand over the work to other functions and teams to lead from the rest of the stations. The Office of Strategy Management or an external strategy facilitator normally takes over from here. Leadership however, needs to be physically present at the close of the work of each station to approve the outputs at that station and declare victory once the vehicle has reached each milestone station. Therefore strategy development is a major organisational change effort. It requires leadership at its initiation, implementation and measurement. Organisations that are guided by strong strategy-making processes rarely suffer sudden heavy declines that require major organisation development interventions. This is because the strategy implementation plans produced at each of the four stations act as guards and guides to employees to notice emerging declines, and routinely take corrective measures as prescribed by the strategy Roadmap milestones of measurement, monitoring and reporting performance.
Station Two: Develop the Strategy
What Key Issues are Affecting our Organisation?
Station Two impact question is for organisational members to get down and dirty by assessing and evaluating mega trends at local, national
and international levels that will have a direct or indirect impact on their organisation. The task at this station is the primary r ole of the office of strategy management. After being given strategic direction by leadership at Station One, Station Two’s task begins with critical analyses of the internal and external environments in which the organisation operates. The office of strategy management first collects appropriate statistical, quantitative and qualitative data, then facilitates stakeholder-wide consultative workshops to process these data. The data to be processed is for landscape analysis, performance analysis; SWOR Analysis, including an alignment review of the goal and objectives set out in Station One. Landscape analysis reviews political, economic, social, environmental issues and the context in which the organisation operates so that organisational members get to understand their environment. The relevant economic factors to be analysed include development indicators, literacy rates, GDP per capita used in the context the organisation operates. The political context includes state stability [e.g. levels or trends of conflict], governance, capacity of institutions, and access and availability of services. For the social context, strategists have to review demographics, urbanisation and migration patterns, and population size and age. For the environmental context, data to be analysed include availability and suitability of land, climatic conditions and their impact on development, and other natural disaster risks that have to be mitigated in the strategy. For organisations that work in the relief and development sectors it is recommended that the landscape analysis should include social risk/vulnerability [e.g. disabilities, refugees, hunger, diseases], unemployment, education, infrastructure, inequities and religious contexts.
Performance analysis is the second step in the data analysis process. Organisations already in existence perform self-performance assessments against all products, goods, and services areas that bring the bottom-line to their institution. The performance analysis exercise can still be done by strategists planning to develop a brand new organisation to enable them to craft a clear strategic direction of the emerging organisation. At this step new organisations review skill sets of their staff already on board, funding levels, and potential strategic partnerships in their market. Non-government organisations already established in the community development arena assess how their household and livelihoods projects contribute to the welfare of families and communities. Public sector organisations assess how their programme and service delivery meet the national growth and development strategy targets. Private sector companies review how their current brand
offerings or product lines are meeting productivity and profitability targets set by shareholders. Performance assessment is a self-rating exercise which should be rigorous, brutal and honest in order to help leadership know and plan for a stronger organisation henceforth.
After performance assessment, there comes SWOR analysis. SWOR stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Risks. Strengths and weaknesses are targeted to further analyse organisational Performance. Opportunities and risks are targeted to further analyse the organisational Landscape. SWOR Analysis is the third set of analysis to buttress, bring together, and sharpen the analyses done in the first two steps. This is an objective and collaborative analysis of the organisational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks/threats to be assessed and prioritised by all organisational members. The combined strength of the conclusions from the landscape, performance, and SWOR results provide a focussed and solid platform to determine the strategic direction of the organisation. Finally the office of strategy management compares conclusions from data analyses with the master goal and strategic objectives in or der to firm them up and bring stronger alignment among vision-mission-values statements with the Master Goal and Strategic Objectives before the whole team starts working on the strategy map and the scorecard. It is the analysed results that help provide alignment and to confirm the coher ence among these components. This task is a reality check to confirm that the new strategic vision and mission is responding to environmental weaknesses and threats, while leveraging the strengths and opportunities available to the organisation in its market. The master goal and strategic objectives then capture the specific strategic measurable milestones.
Strategists conducting this analytical exercise give the whole organisation a chance to stop and conduct a collaborative self-reflection of its performance and make conclusions that help leadership develop and strengthen the next strategic objectives and targets for the new strategic period. So Station Two resolves questions and uncertainties about internal and external factors that impinge on developing a robust and successful organisation. Such intelligence will help in critical choices about what the organisation will do, and how to allocate resources in a prudent and prioritised manner. The expected results from the data analyses station include the designing and organising of organisational effectiveness programmes and systems; business lines/units that will conduct prioritised business; and the organisational branding programme that will ensure the organisation will take a strategic position and share in its market.
Station Three: Translate the Strategy
How do we express our strategy to best compete in our chosen market?
Station Three impact question is the joint role and accountability of the offices of strategy and operations. Guided by the vision-mission-values statements from Station One, plus data analyses results and goal-objectives set from Station Two, the major task in Station Three is to translate the strategy into its discrete implementation functions and express it in ways that are usable and linkable to the market. Operations and other crosscutting functions come in to bring the implementation realities through the design of the strategy map, by setting strategic objectives, targets and indicators. All organisational functions and teams put their hands on the deck to be sure they draw and locate themselves on the strategy map, through strategic objectives, and in most cases through the targets and indicators that the organisation will be measuring. A well-facilitated process at this station ensures collaboration, inclusivity, and an embracive strategy map, comprehensively covering the specific areas everyone feels energised to own and defend during implementation of the strategy. This is the critical design station where an empowering strategy creates and ensures organisational performance buy-in through collaborative strategy Roadmapping. Specific results of this task are: one-page strategy map; agreement on market niche; and clarity on thematic directions on which the business units, departments, and product lines will operate. This task is strategy planning. It requires meticulous strategy mapping statements that precisely capture and express the strategy by indicating the themes or perspectives that will constitute the organisation’s business. Anything that is not on the strategy map is not in the strategy and no resources can be allocated to such unplanned initiatives. The strategy map prepares the organisation for competition, profitability or impact in its chosen area of business, and thus it is an expression of the whole organisational strategy. The strategic objectives are grouped into, and formulated from four strategic perspectives: Customer; Internal processes; Learning and Growth; and Financial perspectives. The strategic objectives to be developed under those four
perspectives or strategic themes attempt to clearly answer the following:
Customer:
Who are they, and how will the organisation choose to face and serve its customers?
Internal processes:
What and how will we develop and deploy support systems for superior performance?
Learning and Growth:
What game changing levers will we employ to boost capabilities for performance?
Financial:
How do we develop and deploy funding resources to finance critical strategic business initiatives?
These strategic perspectives are the key themes that provide both the glue as well as a positive messaging platform. They are simple yet profound. Themes represent a logical grouping of key issues, priority areas and related strategic objectives. They bring more focus to the Strategy Map and help to clarify the strategic message. Themes also constitute a major organising structure for the cascading and alignment processes during strategy implementation, reporting, and measurement. In some respect, the themes are more representative of the evolving direction and culture of the new organisation… more of a mindset or a mental model if you like. They help glue the organisational strategy to all employees, customers, donors, and shareholders. They help explain the organisation brand to its market and serve to distinguish it from its competition. Clear strategic objectives accompanied by few measurable metrics engender increased accountability for strategy implementation. They reduce role confusion and overload by staff. They prioritise what gets done and gets measured in the organisation.
An aligned and succinct strategy map derives from a well-articulated strategic intent statement which encompasses the vision-mission-values components. Elsewhere in this article, we offer a good example of a strategy map of The RedRoof Brands, a private sector Agribusiness company. Below we also quote the core values statement of the RedRoof Brands showing both the shorthand and a translated, explanatory statement that captures the essence of the strategy map being referred to.
We exist to create value and profits in our business through:
Excellent customer care – We face and serve our customers
Company financial health – Our business grows on people and money
Brand reputation – Our brand name is our best value proposition We create value through presence
Operational research – Research and measurement drive our business
Return on investment – We invest effort and money to get profits
The RedRoof Brands Core Values statement, July 21, 2008
As the reader will prove below, a living example of strong strategy map for the RedRoof Brands is based on the integration of business pr ofitability, customer engagement, learning and innovation, and financial and resource effectiveness. The company’s business profitability is realised through, inter alia, the implementation of new strategic initiatives, increased product and service quality, and aggressive marketing. Engagement cuts across all customer segments: staff, management, customers, vendors and strategic partnerships. Learning and innovation are the bases for generating and sharing new knowledge, integrated staff capacity development and marketing initiatives to grow the financial and business portfolios. Financial and resource effectiveness is a result of a decisive deployment of strategic resources and funds through performance-based people and culture. It also requires a streamlined and well-funded capacity and capability development model, diversified resource acquisition and allocation plan, buttressed by a culture of stewardship of resources. So the four building blocks of the RedRoof Brands strategy map from these four themes produce four performance result arenas for the company as follows:
• Customer Engagement
• Business Profitability
• Learning and Innovation
• Financial and Resource Effectiveness
Below (figure 2)is a good living example of a strategy map of the RedRoof Brands. It is often called the ‘strategy on one page’. This author facilitated the development of this strategy map and the subsequent strategy scorecard.
It is from the strategy map that the strategy scorecard is developed. The scorecard is a measurement and reporting tool for what has been captured and expressed on the strategy map. Organisations that develop strategies with strategy maps and scorecards have since abandoned strategy implementation plans. Strategy Implementation plans were used in place of the scorecard. The implementation plan is simpler to develop but dif ficult to monitor and report from it. The scorecard, which has replaced the implementation plan, is more composite, and comprehensive with all measures and milestones needed to measure performance, ensure accountability, and report on implementation progress. The scorecard succinctly captures the whole strategy planning, performance measures
and its reporting matrices. Developing a good scorecard requires technical and facilitation skills to take the whole organisation through the paces. This author recommends that organisations develop the competence to develop the strategy map and scorecard through strategy Roadmapping to ensure more solid design, measurement and reporting of strategy.
Station Four: Develop the Implementation Plan
How do We Implement the Strategy and Measure Performance?
The final impact question is “How do we implement and measure performance?” This is led by operations/quality assurance and supported by strategy. Responding to this question is fundamental to the success or failure of the organisational vision-mission and master goal. The whole strategic intent is measured at this terminal station, which is the destination station in the Strategy Roadmap. This is the last station where the organisational capabilities are deployed to measure the attribution, contribution and impact of the strategy. The major task is to scope the critical initiatives that will constitute operational tasks in the business units. The second activity is to develop a strategy scorecard that holds all the monitoring, measurement, and reporting indicators for the strategy. At this stage, tasks and functional accountabilities are negotiated and allocated to leaders, departments or teams. Scorecard measurement requires management oversight.
The outputs of this final station is to develop and agree on funding models, business targets and resource allocation to be submitted for leadership approval before implementation. Getting consensus on funding models and strategic resource allocation should be a participatory and inclusive exercise with all relevant functions and units that are expected to deliver the strategy. This
is the final station of the Strategy Roadmap that determines the size of organisational operations, initiative funding and resource allocation, including the performance management system of the organisation to achieve its mission. This station is also an integrative stage of the Roadmap where agreements on the strategic plan, measurements, resources, people, and organisational performance culture are finalised. It is also at this final station that the final investment portfolio and organisational performance management system are agreed upon and implemented.
Conclusion
As we have seen along the Roadmap, at each station of the Road people get to know the types of tasks and who will do them. Participants understand the right impact question to ask and what results to expect from their deliberations at each station. They can use the Strategy Roadmap as a straw model showing responsibilities, accountabilities and outcomes to be delivered at each station. With good facilitation, organisational members develop a competence to develop and implement a results-based strategy.
Strategy Roadmapping is one of the most effective participatory, collaborative and negotiated strategy-making processes I have known. By the fourth and final station if anyone still feels left out, they are really out of the game and should consider joining another league.
1 The author has dealt in depth with specific strategy components and terminologies in Strategy Lexicon: Language is everything for Flawless Strategy Execution” under publication.
2 Ibid, for details of great examples for developing impactful goal statements, strategic objectives, targets and indicators
About the Author:
Dr. Godwin M.A. Hlatshwayo is an organisational strategy development and implementation practitioner. He holds a BA in Literature and Philosophy; M Ed in Industrial Education and Training; and a Ph D in Organizational Development, with 30 years’ experience in institutional development and local government management; social protection planning; pro-poor community driven development; and team coaching.
For ten years Dr. Hlatshwayo worked as an Investment Promotions and Change Management Executive for the World Bank in Washington DC, USA. For 12 years he was an international management consultant with private, public, community, and governmental organizations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa.
In the past five years Dr. Hlatshwayo worked for World Vision International as their Africa Director of Strategy Development and Management, based in Kenya and South Africa.
Contact redroof2009@gmail.com.
Phone +27-76-422-5493; +27-71-168-4153; +27-11-704-1387
P.O. Box 69925. Bryanston 2021 Johannesburg, South Africa
or P.O. Box 868, Marondera, Zimbabwe
