Strategy Execution: Is It a Culture or Process Issue?

Bob Turek — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Harvard Business on-line’s post by Tom Davenport seems to deal with culture when describing two extremes to strategy development and execution:

1. Strategic Engineering- strategy is an engineering exercise with employees being the cogs in the machine.

2. Strategic Anarchy- executives get out of the way of employee’s entrepreneurial and innovative energies.

He suggests that a reconciliation of the two must take place.

While I see it as a culture issue I also see it like one of the commentors as not so much a reconciliation problem but one of creating a flexible environment controlled by standardized business processes. Letting elements of anarchy prevail can lead to the dreaded “idea man” who never gets anything done while disrupting and delaying all intiatives; i.e., you need them but they must be controlled. Certainly, the “cogs in machine” view leaves employee innovation out of the picture.

The “flexibility” required means having standardized processes that enhance both innovation and strategy execution (e.g., strategy creation, linking strategies to tactics and projects to tactics, project acceleration/prioritization/alignment, others). High-value PMOs, or PMO-like organizations, are a crucial element, along with a governance board (or set of executives) that the PMO supports, for strategy execution.

How does your organization support innovation and strategy execution? How is this done without a PMO-like organization that supports strategic alignment, acceleration, and prioritization of projects?