Get On the Same Page with a Strat-Map
A Powerful Leadership Tool for Providing Direction
Throughout Your Organization
In the way that a master chef’s recipe describes the essentials for creating a distinctive dish, a Strategy Map describes the essentials for creating a distinctive organization.
When a master chef creates a signature dish, each ingredient and each preparation step contribute to the final result. What makes the dish distinctive is the unique combination of ingredients and preparation. In the right combination, commonplace ingredients and steps can yield a magnificent and distinctive food experience.
The main ingredients of a strategy map are an organization’s strategic objectives, coherently organized into a one-page diagram. Like like an extraordinary recipe, even commonplace organizational objectives in the right combination can yield an exceptional and distinctive organization.
Strategy Maps - or as I call them, strat-maps - evolved from the Balanced Scorecard model developed in the 1990s by Robert Kaplan and David Norton of the Harvard Business School. Strategy maps are widely used in business, non-profit, and public organizations, large and small. Strat-maps are a brilliant tool for organizations where “intangible” qualities - e.g. specialized knowledge, leadership, or company culture - are instrumental to an organization’s identity and success.
The creation of a strat-map requires an organization to identify essential strategic objectives in each of four perspectives - financial, operational, customer, and intangible know-how - then link how they relate to each other in a one-page map. The perspectives are universal, although how they are organized to link strategic objectives is different for businesses than it is for non-profits and public entities.
When engaged in strategic planning, organizations often focus too much on what actions they are doing, and too little on what results are being achieved - especially how results are experienced by customers. Regardless of whether the organization is a business, non-profit, or public entity, the key to getting a strat-map right is clarity about what customer experience the organization desires to create. (see related article, Ask This Question)
Ultimately, all strategic objectives should contribute to creating a distinct result that is valuable to customers. For non-profits and public entities - even when there is a clear “mission” - it’s not uncommon to go through a process of clarifying who their customer (constituent, consumer, community, client) is before they can specifically identify customer oriented results.
Strategy guru Michael Porter notes that strategy is about choosing a particular “set of activities” to deliver a “unique mix of value.” Too often the outcome of strategic planning retreats is a list of actions that have no apparent connection to each other. Strategy is more than a list of to-do items. A strat-map can help everyone in your organization see how various actions “link’” to create a unique mix of value to customers - in short, a real strategy.
A one page strat-map that captures the essence of a company, in the hands of talented leaders, becomes an exceptional tool to foster clear and focused effort - and thereby create and sustain an exceptional organization.
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by Tom Stevens (c)2012
Tom Stevens helps leaders create and sustain exceptional organizations. To contact Tom, visit www.ThinkLeadershipIdeas.com or call 800 727-9788
This article may be freely reprinted in your company, association, or publication (or website) under the following terms: that the author attribution, copyright notice, contact information, and this reprint notice be included; and that you inform us that you are using the article (samples appreciated).
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Create a Strategy Map for Your Organization - how Think Leadership Ideas can help
Get on the Same Page with a Strat-Map - 7 Ideas Coach podcast
Ask This One Question...
Your Answer Informs How To Align the 5 Key Priorities of Leading an Organization
If you want to create and sustain an exceptional organization, one that stands out from the rest, the most important question you can ask is “What is the experience we create?”
In a previous article I outlined the 5 key priorities for leading an organization - direction, performance, innovation, structure, and culture. The key to aligning these priorities is to ensure they all are focused on creating a specific customer experience.
Why is “customer experience” the critical driver for successful enterprises? Technology, globalization, and a relentless 24/7 pace have pushed productivity, lowered prices, and turned many products and services into commodities. These same factors have also stimulated an increased desire to find expressions of individuality and meaning. Much of the world has moved into a post-service economy where value is created by knowledge and creating experiences. In today’s marketplace, you need right-priced quality products and services along with great customer service just to be in the game. The businesses that win our attention are those that meet our higher-level needs – personal attention, belonging, identification, meaning, and image.
Melinda Davis, in her thought-provoking book The New Culture of Desire makes a case that seeking ‘bliss’ will be the new driver for consumer buying decisions. Increasingly in today’s marketplace, people seek experiences, not simply products or services. Valued experiences may include:
- Belonging to an identified group or community;
• Symbols of status;
• Representations of a desired lifestyle;
• Affirmations of self-image or personal values;
• Personal relationships with the people with whom we conduct business.
An “experience” can be defined as the sum of interactions that people have with your business combined to form a coherent and meaningful whole in the mind of the customer. Case example: Starbucks makes excellent coffee, with friendly and expedient service – but where the company really cashed in was in marketing the experience of a daily dose of luxury accessible to the common soul. The growth of Starbucks is now legendary, and their stores are ubiquitous. As Starbucks grew into a powerful national brand, independent shops everywhere sought success by contrasting themselves as the authentic local coffee shop. In this writer’s local environment, Cup-A-Joe, Weaver Street Market and Caffe Driade have become fabulous coffee spots where people gather. Meanwhile Starbucks continues to sustain its brand via focus on customer experience, a few years ago through an emphasis on music, and more recently through a concentrated effort of engaging customers both within stores and via one of the most extensive social media communities on the planet. The lesson here is that for both national and local businesses, attention to the customer experience plays a role in establishing value far beyond simple price, quality, or service considerations.
Customer experience is relevant to organizations from all sectors - business, public and non-profit. Much of the success of Habitat for Humanity can be attributed to their strategy of creating a hands-on experience of building a home - an experience shared by the recipient home owners, individual volunteers, and corporate donors alike.
Fully answering the question, “what is the experience we create?” requires thinking honestly and deeply about both your organization and your customers. It requires meaningfully connecting multi-faceted associations that customers make with your industry, product, or service to important aspects of customers’ emotions, thoughts, and values. Important: answer the question from the customer’s point of view, otherwise your thinking won’t go beyond simply listing what your organization does for customer service and quality.
Organizations that are intentional in how they create customer experiences are relentless in shaping their behaviors, communications, marketing materials, and surroundings in order to evoke a personal experience in the mind of the customer. Leadership lesson - if you simply think of what you offer your customers as a mix of price, quality, or service, you probably are missing out on real success. When you are intentional about delivering your products and services packaged in a creative and coherent experience, you give yourself a powerful edge to maximize the value you offer – and therefore the value that comes back to you.
***
by Tom Stevens (c)2012
Tom Stevens helps leaders create and sustain exceptional organizations. To contact Tom, visit www.ThinkLeadershipIdeas.com or call 800 727-9788
This article may be freely reprinted in your company, association, or publication (or website) under the following terms: that the author attribution, copyright notice, contact information, and this reprint notice be included; and that you inform us that you are using the article (samples appreciated).
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The 5 Priorities of Leadership
What to Focus On So Your Organization Gets Results
A universal hazard of leading any organization is being pulled in so many different directions that you lose sight of what is important. So where should leaders focus energy, effort, and attention? Answer: focus on priorities of leadership concern.
I believe there are 5 key priorities for leading an organization - direction, performance, innovation, structure, and culture. These 5 concerns apply to leading organizations of every size and in every sector - business, non-profit, and public.
Attention to all 5 of the priorities is essential, although the proportion of attention paid to each specific priority area will vary by organization and circumstances. Indeed, bringing all 5 of these organizational concerns into alignment is part of the “art” of leadership. Focus too much on or too little on any of these priorities, and you hamper your organization from maximizing success.
It’s easy to become consumed by the day to day activities of an organization, to feel like you’re working hard in your business but not really leading it. Leadership is about the discipline of attending to leadership priorities - when you work on these, you are working ON your business, not just in it.
Direction
Why does your organization exist, where is it going, and how will it get there? It is the job of the leader to communicate direction in a way that serves as a guide for performance and innovation. The elements of direction include an organization’s purpose, often captured in mission and vision statements; shared values intended to guide action at all levels; and strategy, the specific set of actions an organization performs that make it distinctive.
Performance
How efficiently and effectively are results achieved? How well is the organization doing it’s work? Leaders of exceptional organizations foster focused action to achieve specific objectives, and then measure results. Wise leaders measure performance from several perspectives - e.g., financial results, customer experience and satisfaction, operational and marketing effectiveness, employee learning and development.
Innovation
How are ‘new dimensions of performance’ created? What does the organization need to do differently? How is change handled? Innovation is often at a ‘creative tension’ with performance - performance being about systems to reduce errors and increase efficiency, whereas innovation is best supported through experimentation that is often inefficient and downright chaotic. Exceptional leaders seek the right balance.
Structure
Structure and culture are the two ways (other than directly doing things themselves) that leaders can ‘make things happen’ in an organization. Structure drives behavior, much the way the banks of a river direct the flow of water. Savvy leaders pay close attention to creating structures - formal processes, how teams or departments are organized, facility layout, etc. - that drive achievement of desired results, while minimizing obstacles along the way.
Culture
If structure is like the banks of a river, culture is like the river’s current. It guides what people do by default, how they make use of the organization’s structures - or work around them! Smart leaders pay great attention to shaping the organization culture so it aligns with organizational structures, and supports desired direction, performance, and innovation.
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by Tom Stevens (c)2012
Tom Stevens helps leaders create and sustain exceptional organizations. To contact Tom, visit www.ThinkLeadershipIdeas.com or call 800 727-9788
This article may be freely reprinted in your company, association, or publication (or website) under the following terms: that the author attribution, copyright notice, contact information, and this reprint notice be included; and that you inform us that you are using the article (samples appreciated).
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Performance, Innovation...and Change
How Leadership for Performance
is Different Than Leadership for Innovation
So you want to lead your organization to instill high performance? Absolutely.
And you want to promote innovation and a culture of change to keep your organization ahead of the game? Of course.
Be careful you aren’t leaving your people scratching their heads confused - or worse, that you aren’t creating disincentives for both performance and innovation.
Leading for performance is very different from leading for innovation. And leaders must often manage both simultaneously.
Performance
Performance is about achieving results, efficiently and effectively. Leading for high performance is centered on management excellence - organizing resources and processes to accomplish work, setting standards for performance and quality, then measuring execution against those standards.
Organizational characteristics that encourage high performance include:
- clear communication about expectations, both individual and group
- clarity and standardization of roles and tasks
- timely performance feedback and accountability
Innovation
Peter Drucker defines innovation as “a change that creates a new dimension of performance.” A new dimension is not simply an incremental change, but reflects expanded size, scope, or direction.
Organizational characteristics that encourage ongoing innovation include:
- focus on overall results of the group, rather than individual performance
- Minimal formal structures and hierarchal roles
- An emotional tone that is personal and non-critical
Different Perspectives on Change
Change in one sense is the antithesis of performance. High performing organizations craft their business processes for efficiency and seek to repeat them with as few errors as possible. Incremental change that improves efficiency in the established process is generally welcome. When change reshapes the process, however, then performance is disrupted.
Conversely, change is inherent in the very definition innovation. To seek innovation is to seek change.
The Leadership Challenge
Performance is often in a ‘creative tension’ with innovation - the former is about systems to reduce errors and increase efficiency, whereas the latter requires experimentation that is often inefficient and downright chaotic.
Leaders who over-value performance may resist change outright, or simply give lip service to change while they focus strictly on performance execution.
Leaders who over-value innovation may fail to institute performance structures that capture value and achieve goals.
Leaders who don’t pay attention to the difference can easily give mixed messages. Following are actions that leaders can take to integrate performance with innovation...
Articulate the “mode” in which people should operate. For a given task or project, do you want people to focus on performance (do this as error free as possible), or on innovation (prototype creative solutions and learn from your mistakes)?
Define and differentiate structures that support both performance and innovation. Structures that promote performance are documented processes, defined functional units, and quality controls. Structures to promote innovation include functional units dedicated research or creativity (think skunk works), retreats or meetings that get people out of routines, cross-matrix structures, and support for communities of practice.
Cultivate a culture that supports the right balance of performance and innovation. Culture is like the river current, carrying everything in a particular direction unless resisted. Culture guides what people will do by default. Savvy leaders pay great attention to shaping the organization culture so it supports desired action.
Hire and develop people for multiple roles. Be mindful of how your hiring and development processes support performance skills, innovation skills, or both.
Articulate the organization’s direction. Direction addresses the questions, “Why does your organization exist, where is it going, and how will it get there?” It is the job of the leader to articulate direction, by ensuring clarification and expression of an organization’s purpose (mission and vision), values, and strategy. It is in having a clear direction articulated that resolves the creative tension between performance and innovation.
***
by Tom Stevens (c)2011
Tom Stevens helps leaders create and sustain exceptional organizations. To contact him, visit www.ThinkLeadershipIdeas.com or call 800 727-9788
This article may be freely reprinted in your company, association, or publication (or website) under the following terms: that the author attribution, copyright notice, contact information, and this reprint notice be included; and that you inform us that you are using the article (samples appreciated).
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Power Up Your Influence
Leadership is about gaining willing followers for a course of action. Influencing how others act, think, or feel is the essence of genuine leadership. Plus, influence is at the heart of outstanding customer service, exceptional professionalism, and enlightened management. So how do you bolster influence?
The quality of how others experience you either amplifies or interferes with what you have to offer in any role, position, or expertise. In seminars and coaching I encourage the cultivation of three qualities that - especially in combination - form a powerful means to build influence with integrity, while demonstrating reliability, authenticity, and meaning. These qualities are consistency, congruence, and coherence.
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