Why strategy execution is a resource planning problem
In a recent interview with Wharton School, Professor Lawrence Hrebiniak, who just published the second edition of his book, "Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change" (2013), cites "one pitfall that threatens the strategy execution pro
Every corporate and operational business plan must be supported by a plan of execution. The execution plan must lay out clearly the key decisions and actions required for making the strategy work AND, more importantly, who is going to do this work. This issue about “people” tends to be more critical when the size of change that the strategic plan is suggesting is beyond the capacity of the current organisation.
What tends to be missing is the realisation that a portfolio of projects (both new and existing), designed to achieve multiple strategic objectives, is going to fight for people resources already 100 per cent committed to the current tasks and projects that are a legacy from last year’s intentions.
To effectively design and plan an execution plan, you must have a fairly accurate resource allocation model that allows you to forecast the what-if-scenario’s of how and when you can sequence all the new initiatives the strategy is demanding. As I stated in my book, Executing Your Strategy, “Many organisations have little or no process for determining their true capacity for strategy execution.” Planning execution without an integrated resource calendar (even with the critical positions that are in constant demand) allow projects and initiatives to proceed without understanding the consequence of over-committing people in the organisation. And remember, availability is NOT a skill set!
In Thailand, this means people will generally smile, say yes, and go about their work to please the boss! But a major consequence of this is that project deliverables get delayed a long time as they (mid-management) are forced to work out all the conflicting time constraints, and without clear priorities, business as usual takes precedent.
Another major factor in planning the resource calendar is understanding the interdependence or interfaces with the cross-functional work that needs to take place. These cross-interfaces must be defined in order to sequence the timing of all the project deliverables or the overall project can also suffer major time delays. Failure to develop a resource-based strategy execution plan is a problem or pitfall that usually ends in poor schedule performance and the original scope of the projects tends to be “de-scoped” to make up for the time that has been lost. This can directly impact the strategic outcomes an executive team is expecting and it can create dis-engagement by employees because they are working very long hours to get the assigned work done.
There are some specific things you can do to develop effective execution plans. First, you can easily begin to deal with the cross-functional interfaces in your organisation by having your strategic management office facilitate, with the project team members, an integrated “scope-of-deliverables” session at the beginning when you plan the execution plans for the portfolio of initiatives and projects.
Second, you can build a resource allocation model based on the estimated resource requirements for the deliverables in the strategic portfolio. This is the hard step but a vital one. This step will allow the organisation planners and managers to sequence the work and optimise the demand vs supply of resources available.
And finally, the planner must begin to understand the real productive capacity of the individuals doing the work. A worker performing a task is influenced critically by their level of personal engagement with their job, skill/competency level, number of current projects on their plate, how long they work on average per week, the number of interruptions (think smartphone) during their day, and the number of operational contexts being managed.
As Hrebiniak states, “Again, the assumption [by executives] seems to be that execution simply happens or unfolds seamlessly, and this is a mistake.” Simply put, executives would have more credibility if they required a resource allocation model in the execution planning process because it is a leader’s job to make sure the right projects are staffed with the right people at the right time. This is the essence of strategy execution!
William Malek is Strategy Execution Practice Leader at the APMGroup and co-author of “Executing Your Strategy” (Harvard Business School Press, 2008). Write to him at [email protected]
