Unlock efficiency: Accelerate the strategy process in your large organization

Strategy processes are often lengthy. There are many reasons for this. For example, they are linked to decisions. Why should you commit yourself to a decision if there is nothing to gain or lose?

I myself have experienced strategy processes that took years or were aborted in between. Some have cost almost 7-figure sums. New information had often emerged in the meantime, so that the considerations and approaches had to be rethought.

Strategy development often takes too long

It takes too long. In this day and age, nobody can afford to take months to develop a strategy. It has to happen quickly and it has to last. At least 12-24 months. And it must be feasible and lead to an advantage (more customer benefit, competitive advantage).

Another phenomenon that is often encountered is that there is only planning instead of strategy. On the one hand, this stems from the desire for efficient management with target systems. Management by Objectives, Balanced Scorecard or Objectives and Key Results are common methods for controlling and managing business. Their introduction creates a framework that makes it easier to track and communicate target achievement. Deviations are also quickly identified.

On the other hand, there is the human desire for consistency and coherence. Plans satisfy this desire when they are repeated on an annual basis. They make the business predictable. They create an overview of the risks.

However, they usually only represent a continuation of the status quo with minimal changes. It is like waiting for the next unexpected event to react. If you can react within your means, then you're in luck. But if not, you will quickly enter crisis mode.

Forecasting skills, adaptation skills, resilience as a miracle cure?

Of course, forecasting skills, adaptive skills and resilience are very helpful. Predicting things in order to derive and implement opportunities for competitive advantages would be highly desirable. The same goes for adaptability: being able to react more quickly is a great advantage in business. Even without a certain degree of resilience through redundant capacities, alternative supply chains and critical stocks, hardly anyone will be able to get by.

But can you afford it? Or can you implement it?

For example, forecasting skills: managers would have to constantly deal with scenarios and options and the associated advantages and disadvantages. It would be part of their daily work. The results would have to be incorporated into an overarching construct. Discussions about this create little customer benefit and are associated with high communication and time expenditure.

For example, adaption competence: What if you have specialized production lines that need to be utilized to cover fixed costs? You cannot adapt them at will.

For example, resilience: How much redundancy, how much stock is sufficient for the targeted delivery capability? How much capital can you use to achieve the desired redundancy?

What I'm missing in all of this is focus. You can derive many activities from the desire to increase forecasting competence, adaptation competence and resilience and thus fill the day. But whether you are actually working on the right topic and devoting enough energy to it remains questionable.

What is the alternative?

The alternative is to quickly go through a real strategy process. A process that provides answers to the fundamental questions. A process that results in a focused and actionable plan. One that stands up to questioning. One that addresses the most important challenge or opportunity that you as an organization can overcome. One that gives you a competitive advantage by creating additional customer value, or making the same customer value easier. And a process that is completed in a few days.

A fast process gives you advantages. Obviously you save costs. You can go through it more often if necessary. And you will ask the right questions more often than by planning with target systems or generically increasing forecasting competence, adaptation competence, resilience. You are more likely to examine the business from all sides, be proactive and have a real chance of leaving the competition behind.

What is part of a strategy process?

There are a few things that always feature in a process in some form.

1. understanding the organization's current situation: This may include reviewing existing strategies and initiatives, analyzing market trends, assessing internal capabilities, and identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

2. definition of goals and objectives: The framework for the process comes from vision, from the values , from the purpose and from the overarching goals of the organization.

3. market analysis and competitive situation: Examination of the external environment.

4. stakeholder engagement: The involvement of key stakeholders is necessary for implementation support.

5. strategic options and alternatives: You need options to decide between. Choosing one option is always a rejection of another. This creates focus.

6. decision making and prioritization: Selecting the option. Listing assumptions and risks. Deprioritizing other options.

7. action planning and implementation: Establish an actionable plan with clear milestones, responsibilities, timelines and success metrics.

8. monitoring and evaluation: Establish the means for feedback and review.

9. communication planning: Crafting a communicable story that builds on the organization's existing capabilities and strengths.

10. stress test: Questioning the plan. Does it really make sense? What does the customer gain? What if this or that? Can it cope with headwinds?

That's quite a lot. What is done in your organization? What is skipped?

How can the strategy process be accelerated?

What is the secret? Can you speed up the process without reducing quality? If so, how?

• Reduce the number of participants in the direct discussion: By reducing to 4-7 participants (core team) you reduce the number of communication channels between the participants. The number of communication channels increases quadratically with the number of participants. Therefore, time and costs are much higher with larger groups of participants. However, you need participants who will later implement the decisions and who know the business and new developments at customers and in the market.
• Involve the organization and other stakeholders: Give everyone else a chance to contribute with observations, ideas and questions. Surveys are ideal for this. The feedback is helpful for moving quickly through the 10 points, as focus topics become visible, but ideas for options are also introduced. Communication that addresses the topics in the survey leads to faster acceptance and implementation.
• Asynchronous implementation of sub-steps: Going through a few sub-steps will save you a lot of time during the workshop. The things that can be done in advance should also be done in advance. A survey can be done within a week (if you accept, even if not everyone can take part due to vacation or illness). Interviews can be conducted with the most important people in one or two days.

• Ask questions: When participants are asked to exclusively ask questions about the topic within 2-4 minutes (without evaluating the questions or immediately formulating answers), several things happen at once. Firstly, the topic and the previous approach are called into question. You may find a different (better) framework for the task. Secondly, you challenge your subconscious to find good answers. Hal Gregersen, from MIT, has often used this method and has found that one or two new options are found in a very short time that were not previously thought of. It also starts a search process, which in my view interrupts the retrieval of automatic answers. The imagination is stimulated. This allows you to get better answers more quickly, even if you find yourself at a dead end. Questioning techniques can therefore be used to increase efficiency in the workshop itself or in the interviews.
• A moderator with knowledge of innovation: A moderator who can react according to the situation and methods, who is familiar with classic and newer methods for finding ideas for innovations and strategy, will guide you better on your way than someone who tries to sell a scheme. Strategy is always very individual. A scheme alone will rarely be enough.

What does that mean for you?

You have to make a decision. Either continue as before, with all the risks and side effects. Or you can set new priorities and question the entire system in an efficient way.

I think that if you really want to make the organization fit for the future, you will have to question the entire system more often.

Perhaps none of this is really new to you. You just don't need a little push. If you want to test the effect of such an approach without risk, I offer a free pulse check for the strategy. Simply find 5-10 people with whom you can do the Pulse-Check together. This means that you write your observations, questions and ideas in an anonymous survey (which I provide on request) and you receive this feedback unfiltered as a raw version, and somewhat edited as a presentation. You will see the mix of questions and the need for strategy development.