You finished the third quarter goals and started working on your org strategy with your leadership team. This strategy will help you make progress and achieve your goals for the next fiscal year.
Last year you and the team collectively spent 20+ hours creating the strategy and getting each and every word of your mission statement and vision just right. The year did not go as planned. Not all the team members were aligned, the strategy was clear to some and not clear to others and worst of all, your team took on more projects than it could let go. This year things will be different.
This or something like this is a familiar story for many of the leaders I work with.
There is no model or solution that is perfect for this challenge but that does not mean we should not try. In the program that I look after we teach strategy and we borrow the “Playing to Win” strategy cascade from Roger Martin. Again, the model is not perfect, but the dialogue produced from the questions in the model accomplishes three key things.
- Provides simple language that all levels of the org can understand
- Provides alignment for the team
- Provides a framework to know what to say “no” to
The strategy cascade consists of five questions. Each influences each other. This is not an exercise that can be done once and you are done but rather should evolve as you learn and grow. The answer to one question can cause you to adjust and change answers to the others.
Here are the questions:
What is our winning aspiration?
This is your direction – what are you trying to accomplish. Typically, this is not achieved in the short term but is effectively your north star.
Where will we play?
Your winning aspiration may be very similar or even the same as someone else, but you can play in entirely different arenas. Who will you serve? Who or what are the highest leverage targets for your winning aspiration?
How will we win?
Here we have the basic strategy question, what is the value proposition? In the space that you are going to play, what can you uniquely deliver that no one else can?
What capabilities must we have?
The capabilities question can sometimes trip folks up. These are the capabilities of your team or organization and not the capabilities of your customer or stakeholder. It is helpful to make a bulleted list for this guiding question by starting each bullet with “Ability to” and then the capability you need to achieve your winning ambition.
What management systems are required?
Finally, we get to the tactical. What are the specific systems (design / rhythm of business / structure) that can be put in place to develop and reinforce your capabilities almost by default? It is important here to include listening systems that help you know when you need to adjust the strategy as environments change.
The output or answers to these questions should allow someone who knows nothing about your business to understand what you are looking to do and how you plan to go about doing it. This is the simple language that creates clarity and helps with team alignment. The best part is the clarity of the strategy after going through the cascade makes it possible for those at any level in the organization be able to say “no” to projects or requests that do not relate to the strategy.
Try this out with your team, even against your existing strategy. I have run a few of these and have been amazed at how it has helped us more clearly understand the impact we are trying to make.
