Successfully implementing business strategy

Course Overview

It is difficult to think of anything more important to organisations than the sound implementation of their strategy, the key to achieving their mission. But consider the following statistics:

• 95% of employees do not understand the strategy
• 60% of companies do not link their budgets to the strategy
• 85% of senior management teams spend less than 1 hour a month discussing strategy

A key requirement in effective strategic implementation is to identify the right combination of low-level plans that will deliver the strategy.

Another is to manage the effective implementation of these plans by co-ordinating efforts across the organisation. It is all too easy for managers to shift their priorities to other, non-strategic goals. Are the managers charged with implementing these plans aware of how their efforts and results contribute? Are they given the right resources and authority, and are made properly accountable? In many organisations the budget is the main mechanism through which short-term management is exercised. Does the budget help or frustrate strategic implementation? These, and many other such challenges, affect successful implementation of the strategy.

Audience

• Chief Executives / Managing directors / Finance directors
• Functional directors and all those who are part of the senior management team
• Strategic business unit managers / senior departmental managers / strategic planners

Skills Gained

This programme will help you:

• Confirm that your strategy will achieve your financial targets, or modify your plans so it does
• Get your management team agreed on the priorities and the functional co-ordination needed to achieve them
• Communicate clearly what every manager in the organisation needs to do to support the strategy - providing strategic goals at every level in the business
• Track progress and keep on target to achieve your strategic goals
• Provide strong leadership
• Make correct and speedy adjustments when the world changes unexpectedly

Course Outline

What exactly do we mean by strategy?

• Review of four important strategic models and how to apply them
• What the high-level strategic plans should contain
• How to go about long-term forecasts
• How to go about making your long-term forecasts as accurate as possible so that they form the basis of robust strategic objectives

Checking that the strategy will deliver the promised financial results

• Valuing the organisation financially
• Six ways to create value: does the strategy embrace them?
• What drives value, and do the strategic plans explicitly address them?
• How to develop strategic plans that will deliver quantified financial value

Developing plans to deliver the strategy at every level down the organisation

• A technique for formulating co-ordinated and comprehensive change plans throughout the organisation: the Strategy Tree
• Bridging the gap between the high-level, long-term business plans and the one-year plans at budget holder level
• Using the Strategy Tree to prioritise plans and to identify the key performance indicators through which to monitor implementation

Checking the feasibility of the plans: forecasts; resources; timescales

• Means of improving the forecasting process so that the chances of achieving the desired results if plans are implemented properly are dramatically improved
• Means of improving the forecasting process
• Aligning the strategic planning and the budgeting cycles - the value of continuous budgets
• Techniques to ensure that budgeted resources sit behind the strategic plans
• Checking that the allocated resources can implement the plans in the planned timescale - avoiding wishful thinking

Designing the process for monitoring progress

• What needs to be measured, when and by whom?
• How to go about choosing the performance measures that need to be tracked, and designing a measurement system
• Who is accountable for progress, and how should they account for it?
• Designing a suitable process for elevating problems and for agreeing corrective action

The importance of leadership and how to provide it

• How does strategic leadership differ from other forms of leadership?
• What does the strategic leader have to do?
• Some important leadership models to guide behaviour, and to help you lead, design and implement strategic change as effectively as possible
• Building shared commitment among your management team
• Assessing and improving individual, team and organisational capability for implementing the strategic goals

Successfully implementing business strategy / CM029440