Why You Need To Modernize Your Strategy Deployment Process

Leaders often feel at ease with their current strategy deployment process since so much energy has gone into developing it. It is familiar, after all. But is it adequate?

In an increasingly fast-paced and digital business environment, have yesterday’s methods evolved enough to handle transforming the business for tomorrow?

As leaders become overwhelmed with a myriad of problems to think about, the process of strategy deployment often gets delegated. However, executing great strategy is a unique process in that the business leader is ultimately responsible for the financial results.

Leaders at more mature companies often gain comfort in creating robust approaches to deploy their strategy. In fact, they may have entire departments or teams dedicated to teaching and managing the methods of their choice. Usually framed as Business Operating Systems (BOS), they may leverage frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKR), Hoshin Kanri/X-Matrix and Balanced Scorecard.

However, existing frameworks are becoming increasingly cumbersome and complex—prompting the need for dedicated people to simply ensure the process is followed—and managed using outdated tools like Excel sheets, PowerPoint slides and project management systems.

We believe there are four main opportunities that leaders miss by perpetuating the legacy status quo:

1. Insight: With the rise of digitization and big data, leaders miss out on collecting, analyzing and synthesizing key market, technology and internal trends that provide strategic opportunity.
2. Strategic Alignment: Initiatives often aren’t aligned with strategic intent. This creates waste and dampens collaboration and engagement.
3. Measures: Most strategic plans are disconnected from key measures. A tremendous opportunity is lost in empowering function leaders and teams to transform their respective environments with financial visibility.  
4. Dynamic Control: This important strategy deployment practice is poorly managed with traditional tools.  

Gartner, a leading technology research firm, recommends that companies seek out a dedicated tool to manage the ever changing and complex challenge of strategy deployment.

Pivotal Innovation’s solution was inspired by time-tested approaches like Hoshin Kanri, OKR, Lean and Agile principles, but simplified and digitized for the modern, fast-moving enterprise. Global 250 businesses trust our Pivotal Innovator™ platform to underpin their strategy deployment and transition from antiquated management and reporting structures to a real-time transformation ecosystem.