Guess what? Delivery is important

Ok, I’ll stop being sarcastic. But it’s difficult. After all this time I still see people saying – as if it’s a new thought – that it’s not enough just to write a strategy, you have to deliver it. (Go on, I defy you not to be sarcastic in your response to that.)

I know it’s not a surprise that there remains a need for the statement. Given the amount of effort – and usually time – that it takes to get a strategy agreed, everyone is usually heartily sick of it by then and not feeling at all inclined to deliver it. (‘Thank God that’s done – now we can get on with some real work!”) And that’s assuming it has actually been approved. I’ve worked on many that became out of date or out of favour and just ground to a halt.

I don’t want to get into a debate about what a strategy is. For some organisations it’s a 200-page in-depth analysis and detailed way forward. For others it’s four pages of PowerPoint. Most I have worked for didn’t really embrace strategy, they just thought they should have one. The emphasis on ‘do’ rather than ‘think’ is at fault. The key I think is to show that strategy ensures that all the ‘doing’ is going in the right direction, with purpose and energy towards a point on the horizon and activity is not meandering all over the place – or worse, pulling in opposite directions.

Never has the saying ‘the devil is in the detail’ been so true. A strategy at too high detail often states the obvious or is not meaningful enough.  But getting below that brings the danger of getting bogged down, going down a few blind alleys and generally testing people’s attention span.

Here are some thoughts about how to get round this:

• Firstly consider what it’s for. Why are you doing it and what outcome are you seeking? What is that point on the horizon and how will you describe it?
• What should you call it?  Avoid the word ‘strategy’ if the word conjures up past failures with those people you need to engage. Some organisations think strategy is high-falutin’, airy-fairy nonsense and an excuse not to get on and do things. Here, using a word like framework, roadmap or just plain simple ‘plan’ will remove an unnecessary obstacle right at the beginning. Other organisations prefer the word strategy (or program) as it implies a deeply thought out long-term success plan. Just use whatever will work best. The content can be the same whatever label you attach to it.
• Spend some time at the beginning identifying all the stakeholders.  I think I might need a whole other blog entry on stakeholders but for the moment let’s just say that you want to get on board everyone who has the potential to scupper your strategy. You’ll make it very difficult for yourself if you suddenly realise towards the end that you really need the IT Director to be happy with your proposals.  Take just 20 minutes over a coffee at the beginning of your strategy development to ask each of the key people for views. This can save hours because if you do it later you have to go through the whole thing in more detail and from scratch. And since nobody likes to be an afterthought they are likely to be less receptive.  You can’t deliver an internal comms strategy on your own.
• Keep meeting the same people throughout strategy development. Things change so fast and you shouldn’t rely on them to remember to tell you if something in their area will make a change to what you’re doing. Likely they will be busy working out what it means for them, far less what it might mean for you. Make time for a quick chat – if you have something of value to them to share, all the better. If not, even just a quick catch-up phone call might nudge them to recognise that they have something to share with you. Please, please, don’t leave it too late.  If they hear from someone else that what you’re doing affects them and you haven’t spoken to them about it, it will be difficult to get them back onside.
• Plans always change. Some more frequently than others but what percentage of your plans get implemented with no changes? For me it’s zero in the last five years. I think I implemented a plan once 20 years ago with no changes but the organisation I was working for had the turning circle of an aircraft carrier and my plan was delivered before anyone realised the course was changing. Work to milestones – some of these may be immovable so they are very helpful markers. Stay flexible in how you get to those markers. The greatest benefit of a highly detailed plan is that it makes you look super-organised. But the amount of time you’ll spend updating it is disproportionate to its value.
• The key to delivery is to make sure that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing and when. Giving them a copy of the plan and expecting them to follow it is unlikely to achieve this unless you have people programmed to be perfect. People forget, or something more important crops up, or they feel unsure about it and don’t want to get questions. Obviously the more people involved in the delivery the more opportunity there is for it to go wrong. Try and keep them close and let them know that you will always follow up just to check things are progressing as they should. And remember to thank them – even if they’re just doing what they’re supposed to it makes people feel more appreciated.

It’s stating the obvious to say that writing a strategy is pointless unless it gets delivered. But I also think it’s pointless to write a strategy that turns out to be undeliverable. Of all the successful things I’ve delivered, I can’t *hand on heart* say that any of them went completely as described in the strategy. But that doesn’t mean the strategy was wrong, it just means we took a different path to arrive at the same destination and it’s that last bit that’s important.

Let me know what you think….