When we ask executives "what's keeping you up at night?" we hear things like:
- Unpredictable profitability
- Insufficient customer and market understanding
- Employee resistance to change
- Loss of key talent
- Non-productive alliances and partnerships
- Merger and acquisition disruptions
- Poor strategy and initiative execution
- Non-strategic and financially unsound decision making
When we ask "what are you doing to address these issues?" we hear replies like:
- "We're spending $5 million to implement Six Sigma"
- "We're implementing SAP"
- "We're reengineering our processes"
- "We're restructuring the organization"
- "We're implementing activity based costing"
- "We're implementing supply chain management"
When we then ask "how do these link to your top two or three objectives and the drivers of these objectives?" we usually get a confused look and a long silence………..
What's at the root of these issues?
Issues like loss of key talent or unpredictable profitability are typically symptoms of a misalignment within an organization's strategy implementation infrastructure:
Strategy Implementation Infrastructure
Our research and experience has shown that misaligned strategy implementation infrastructures are caused by external pressures and internal factors like executive focus, process and department integration, self-accountability, shared learning, and foresight.
Many organizations attempt to use management tools to address the issue. Research continues to show that these efforts are met with resistance, are viewed as "flavor of the month" and are rarely result in sustainable elimination of the issue at hand.
Metrus has found a unique breed of "Measurement-Managed Organizations" that use management tools to improve their focus, integration, self-accountability, learning and foresight. The outcome is an improvement in their strategy implementation capability, increased profits, greater agility and reduced risk. Thus, sustainable results.
What are the implications of these issues?
Before addressing the issues (or symptoms, as we like to call them), it's important to understand the implications or impact on the organization.
While we tend to find that implications tend to be stated in financial and operational terms, Metrus has found a unique breed of Measurement-Managed Organizations™ that understand the implications of the issues they face in a holistic way. They tend to identify the implications in Strategic Performance Areas such as financial, customer and market, people, environment, operations and partners and suppliers.
They work hard to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between these strategic performance areas to help them predict the outcome of their efforts to eliminate the issue or take advantage of the opportunity.
What will drive sustainable results?
Our research and experience shows that Measurement-Managed Organizations use a strategy implementation process that maximizes their focus, integration, self-accountability, learning and foresight.
Executives that use tools and techniques like Six Sigma, Customer Relationship Management, Strategic Measurement, Performance Management, Restructuring, and EVA in the context of proactively managing these critical success factors have a much greater opportunity to achieve sustainable results.
Approaching the issues whick keep executives and managers awake at night in the context of critical success factors leads to greater organizational alignment and sustained success.
Measurement-Managed Organizations achieve sustainable results because all of their systems are aligned with their strategy - leading to greater focus, integration, self-accountability, learning, and foresight.