Strategy Breakdown

Ideas for your portfolio come from many sources (described in one of my previous posts), but a large proportion will likely be derived from a strategic planning exercise, where the strategy, both long and short term, is broken down into deliverable initiatives. 

There are many formal models and frameworks for approaching such a breakdown, of which I have tried quite a few over the years. So I thought I’d share what I believe has been the most successful approach for me, it’s certainly the one I found the most engaging for those involved and the best for supporting future articulation of why activities have been selected, or not, when explaining to the wider organisation. 

 Put simply it is a 3 step process: 

1. Articulate the strategic aims/goals of the organisation. These are usually 3 or 4 snappy short aspirational statements which underpin the organisations vision and tend to be focused on major topics such as Customer, People, Finance, etc. 
2. For each aim break it down into a set of measurable outcome focused objectives, no more than 2 or 3 otherwise it will become unachievable. Make these action orientated, generally starting with ‘increase’, ‘decrease’, ‘improve’ etc. and with a specific timebound result. 
3. For each objective break it down into the set of programmes and projects that are required to achieve it. 

The key is to keep asking the group you are working with ‘how’, how can we achieve the aim - will achieving that objective and outcome help to realise it, how can the objective and outcome be delivered - will delivery of that project contribute to its achievement. 

Once it is all broken down you can validate it by starting at the lowest point and working your way back up asking ‘why’. This is important because this is what your project team members need to understand, they need the golden thread which anchors them back to the overall strategic aim, explaining to them why the project they are working on is important, and how the work they are doing contributes to the big picture, the purpose. 

When you have reached consensus that the breakdown tree is complete you can then start articulating dependencies, status and importantly comparing one activity to another. You will have likely produced various options to choose between and this comparative exercise allows you to rule some out, being explicit that option A isn’t going to be implemented as option B has been chosen as the preferred route to the goal. 

With all of that done, you can then prioritise and sequence the activity over the duration of the strategy (see other posts on doing this). 

How does your organisation approach the translation of strategy into execution? 

Note: This approach was at one time most likely based on a formal named method, but I’ve tweaked it somewhat since then and lost the model it originated from, so apologies to those who like to know these things.