The 6-Step Guide to Strategy
Implementation
Strategy Implementation is the term used to describe the process or
activity that ensure that strategic planning is actually executed.
In other words, it's DOING what you said you would do when you were
busy planning the strategy!
• There are six steps in our guide to strategy implementation that you
can follow and ensure that your strategic plan evolves from just a
plan, into a strategic implementation:
• Define your strategy framework
• Build your plan
• Define KPIs
• Establish your strategy rhythm
• Implement strategy reporting
• Link performance to strategy
• Step #1: Define your strategy framework
• You need to start with a simple framework that introduces a strategy
that everyone can understand and get behind. When someone asks
'how are our strategic objectives going' - everyone should be on exactly
the same page about what that actually means.
Step #2: Build your plan
• The next step of our guide to strategy implementation is where you
will start creating your plan. Now that you've got your framework(s) in
place, you're to move onto the actual creation of your strategic plan.
Steps to build your plan.
• Gather the leaders of the organization (founders, CEO, directors, etc)
to agree on your vision.
• start to write down the values that the organization holds.
• Finally write down 3 or 4 focus areas that the team think need to be
addressed in order to reach the vision..
Steps to build your plan.
• Then stop! Don't be tempted to move onto creating strategic objectives just yet.
• Take your basic framework back to your team(s) and start to get them to
independently input ideas for strategic objectives under each of the focus areas.
You might want to assign one focus area to each member of your leadership
team, and have them lead the charge for getting that focus area fleshed out. This
is a great way to ensure buy-in to the final product of your strategic plan.
• Once you've fleshed out the strategic objectives, get back together as a group
and ask yourself a series of hard questions:
- If we deliver each of these strategic objectives under a given focus area, will we
have nailed that focus area?
- If we deliver all of our focus areas, will we reach our vision?
- Will our values help or hinder us along the way?
• It's time to go ahead and launch your strategic plan.
Step #3: Define KPIs
• Step 3 :guide to strategy implementation requires you to
define your KPIs. Key performance indicators are one of the oldest
management tools around - because they work. They keep you
honest about your progress, and focused on your outcomes. They
need to become your encouragement for implementing strategy.
• Here are a few tips when it comes to coming up with your own
• Keep them simple. Don't try to come up with complex ratios that only a small
group of people understand. Make them simple and relatable to everyone in the
organization.
• Choose at least 1 KPI for each of your strategic objectives. More than 1 is fine - but
keep the total number for the organization to no more than 6 or 7.
• Don't make them too hard to measure quickly. Some seen great-looking KPIs that
can only start to be measured years after the strategy begins. That simply isn't
going to work for keeping your strategy implementation efforts focused in the
early days.
• Don't make them all about the money - sure, profit and revenue might be your
end-game, but KPIs should be the drivers of those things - measuring the
outcomes alone adds little value.
Here are some focus areas and the KPIs
Focus Area KPIs
- Number of website visits per month
Clients Find Us
- Size of active mailing list
Clients Subscribe - Free trial to paid conversion rate
- Client NPS
Clients Stay & Grow - Average length of a subscription (days)
- Average revenue per subscription
A Platform to be Proud Of - Average rank on product review sites
Push The Industry Forward - Total google searches for industry keywords
Developing Our People - Staff turnover rate
Step #4: Establish your strategy rhythm
• Decide upfront what your strategy rhythm is going to be –
• How often will you meet to discuss progress?
We'd suggest a minimum of quarterly but monthly would be a great place to
start-off until things get bedded in.
• Who will meet?
You'll need the leadership team at a minimum - but you also need to think
about how to involve the rest of the organization in these strategy catch-ups
too.
• How long will the meeting be?
Don't relegate strategy to an 'any other business' agenda item! Give it a
minimum of 1 hour.
• What structure will the meeting take - which reports will be used?
More on this in Step #5 below
Step #5: Implement consistent & simple strategy reports
• Step 5: guide to strategy implementation focuses on reporting. Now that your
meetings are in place, you'll want to choose a consistent way of reporting the progress
of your strategy implementation. The main objectives of this report should be:
• Consistency. Everyone knows what to expect and what they need to update prior to
the meeting(s).
• Simplicity. The report should give an at-a-glance view of how the strategy is
progressing.
• Accountability. Ensure that the report includes the names of the owner of each goal
(accountability), as well as the names of the people actually getting things done
(recognition).
• Insightful. The report needs to include not only an overview of how the strategy looks
now, but how it's progressing over time. Try to include a comparison period or
graphs/charts that show progress over time, to ensure momentum is maintained.
Step #6: Link performance reviews to
strategy
• The first 5 steps of guide to strategy implementation are the absolute
basics to ensure that you successfully implement your strategy. But
organizations who truly succeed are those who manage to weave
strategy implementation into the fabric of their existence. An easy
way to get started with this is to create a formal link between strategy
and performance reviews. Nothing shows people how important
strategy is more than when it impacts their reviews and potentially
even their reward/remuneration