Service Snapshot: Strategy & Balanced Momentum

Our Balanced Momentum programme – the first of our three Penumbra Balance programmes - brings the strategy planning and execution activities together in a way that creates dynamism and drives strategic momentum.

Challenge

All too frequently managements set a strategic direction but fail to manage the execution part of the programme successfully.

In our experience, it is never difficult to fill a meeting about grand strategy but when it comes to talking about how to implement the strategy it is somehow difficult to fill the room.

With this last point in mind, common problems in strategy execution include:

• Not agreeing goals that will bridge the gap between strategic direction and operational requirements so that aspiration may be turned into reality

• Failing to provide people with the necessary management tools - for example, strategy mapping - and the training to enable them to make the most of them

• Allowing operational problems and issues to crowd out the monitoring and managing activities of the strategy execution after launch

Any one of these will cause underperformance but our Balanced Momentum programme will help you avoid this.

Service Solution

Key to successful strategy implementation is the binding of operations closely to strategy in our five phase programme:

Develop Strategy

We start with the improvement of a current strategy or developing a new one. We help define the Vision, Purpose and Values of the organisation. Many organisations fail right at this point by setting wonderful Visions without tying them into the strategic management system. The Purpose defines the reason to exist of the organisation and its Values are designed to guide peoples’ behaviour.

Then we will carry out strategic analysis of the external macro-economic environment and their markets and then an assessment of internal capabilities and performance.

Finally, the team will formulate their strategy and set out how they intend to achieve it.

Plan Strategy

This is the point at which the team has to engage successfully with the wider organisation and tell them what the objectives and measures will be.

We refine the message and clarify roles and responsibilities, as well as defining new relationships in the organisation using Strategy Mapping and Balanced Scorecard amongst other tools.

Plan Operations

The organisation now has to set out the necessary actions to achieve the strategic aims.

We will identify initiatives that can be implemented quickly and which will create momentum and belief in the organisation that the strategy is right.

Then follow the sales plans and the requisite resource plans together with capital and operating budgets and the P&L statements.

Monitor and Learn

Once the strategy goes live the results will need to be monitored and discussed so that issues can be resolved. To ensure that operations do not crowd out strategy, we set up two types of review meeting with different people and frequencies for both. This will allow different groups to keep operations and strategy on track, identify problems and decide corrective actions.

Refine

With strategy, frequent adjustments are needed, and it will need to be adapted as circumstances alter, or as assumptions are proved wrong.

Benefits

Our programme will help leadership teams:

• Set clear and sensible strategies

• Present them in a way that will help motivate people to strive to achieve them

• Allocate resources

• Keep strategy on track

• Ensure strategy and operations do not drift apart