What is StrategyOps?
Strong execution of a bold strategy is critical to business success. Just as critical is the processes, platforms, and people involved in connecting those two important pieces together. StrategyOps is my proposed solution to this key challenge.
Three Ways to Define an Approach to Connecting Strategy to Meaningful Results
I have had the opportunity to work with many great leaders and visionary strategists throughout my career. I have also been fortunate enough to work with great project managers and experts at executing tactics that were part of a great strategy.
There has sometimes been a disconnect, however, between a visionary idea and its ability to be executed and deemed ultimately successful. The strategist will explain it as a matter of needing good project management. The project manager and tacticians will explain it as a matter of needing a stronger or clearer definition of goals and strategy. The business owner will simply explain it as a failure to meet the KPIs.
I would like to propose that it is something a bit different, and offer the term StrategyOps as its solution. In this article, I will explain what I mean, as well as how to define StrategyOps. This discipline also exists in conjunction with Business Process Optimization (BPO) and analytics and measurement, as seen below:
Let’s get started and discuss how all of these things relate to one another.
The connection between vision and execution
As I mentioned in the introduction, visionary ideas and great processes are not enough to make a great strategy successful. All along the way, the processes, platforms, and people involved need to be doing the right things at the right time, and need a way to ensure they are doing so.
I’m a strong believer in agile, and in using agile methods during a transformation initiative, but even using incremental improvements it is critical to understand if the methods you are using to increment and the execution of your processes is getting you to the right endpoint.
#1 StrategyOps can thus be defined as the strategy by which strategy is planned, implemented, and incrementally achieved.
This missing link that makes strategy successful
Success of a strategy is measured by many things, defined by your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). How do you measure the success of the translation of your vision to how well it was executed? While a subtle difference perhaps, the approach to executing strategy makes all the difference.
Many organizations use business process optimization (BPO) as a means of measuring and improving their processes to great success. But in most cases, this still doesn’t tell an organization which processes to use, only how well the processes work and how they can be adjusted to get better results.
#2: StrategyOps can thus be defined as the missing link between vision, process, and execution that makes strategies successful.
The most overlooked part of implementation
Project management and the implementation of your initiatives can sometimes technically be successful, yet fail to meet the KPIs set forth in the initiative. How so? Think about the enormous responsibilities that fall to how a project or product manager and the multiple stakeholders and sometimes competing priorities.
The definition of what “done” means can often vary depending on who you ask. For instance, for a team or department that is overtaxed and whose bandwidth is limited, simply getting a project across the finish line might be a measure of success because it frees the team up to focus on the next pressing set of projects. This does not, however, guarantee that the project achieved its measurable objectives.
The gap may be more subtle between achieving KPIs and being completed, but it is substantial in regards to the outcomes of your strategic initiatives. When dealing with agile change and transformation, similar enough issues can arise. An agile sprint’s timeline can be met, but that does not mean that it is quantifiably successful according to the business KPIs.
#3: StrategyOps can thus be defined as a method to determine how to improve the effectiveness of phased deliverables or incremental change in an agile process.
Strong execution of a bold strategy is critical to business success. Just as critical is the processes, platforms, and people involved in connecting those two important pieces together. StrategyOps is my proposed solution to this key challenge.
I look forward to writing more about this in the weeks and months to come, and welcome your feedback on this idea.