Strategy Mapping Aligns (and Eliminates) Projects
In my last post I said strategy mapping is “seemingly simple” because environments have different requirements depending on the industry, size, growth patterns, and degree of change. For example, an implantable medical device manufacturer I worked with was more concerned with having scalable business processes and systems because they expected extremely high growth once the FDA approved their new design. Typically companies have high level goals related to revenue and costs that drive all strategies. But the medical device company really wasn’t concerned with X% revenue growth- they were more concerned with business processes and systems that could handle being a both a small company and then a large company very fast.
Another complication in strategy mapping is goals feeding goals and strategies feeding strategies. The map can get quite complex and heavy before it is streamlined and clarified. Then of course there must be agreement on which strategies are more important- AND who owns them. The good news is that if executives from different areas of the business are working on this, they will better understand their relative challenges and priorities. A PMO-like organization within the company can help prioritize projects to fit the strategy prioritization provided by the executives.
The process is fantastic because it tends to clear the air as to which projects are important. It can also reveal mistakes or misses in the strategy area. Strategy mapping is NOT a substitute for strategy creation. The assumption is that you already have a good process that has developed the goals and strategies. Typically the missing piece is linking the tactics and projects to the strategy map in a way that shows clear alignment with individual strategies and then goals.
What centralizing business process gets your executives to work together? Is it strategy mapping? Is there a central governance board that works on prioritizing strategies and projects? If so who does the work of gathering information and working up priority criteria for the governance board? Share your experiences! We can learn from you.
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Bob,
The problem I usually have is that the high level goals are so vague (make more money/quit losing clients/gain more clients) that most people can put together an argument as to why project X fits into one of the goals with no problem.
Best,
LB
Levi- thanks for commenting. I think this is a common problem. The previous post list goals, strategies that feed goals and then tactics that feed strategies. Hopefully it is the tactics, that are fairly well defined, that projects are defined for. Trying to tie projects to strategies IS too vague. If your company were to define clear tactics to support strategies do you think they could focus (eliminate/reduce size of projects) and execute strategies better?
Bob,
That would make much more sense.
Best,
LB
Levi- recent CFO magazine (January 2008) has article on “the effort to combine governance, risk, and compliance into a single software platform”, under the title of “The Emergence of Convergence”, that seems to fit into this discussion of strategy, tactics and projects- as well as your area of compliance. Thanks.