Strategy for Winning

I believe that any organization worth being a part of is an organization that strives to win.  Something within the spirit that strives to part of a winning team. I personally can’t imagine being excited to work in an organization that merely settles for second best. And anyone of quality I’ve ever encountered feels the same way.

In my opinion there are at least 5 basic ingredients for any large organization to win, mostly irrespective of what the organization is trying to win at. Another way to say this is that these are some of the basic things that any organization has to do right in order to succeed. They are:

• Strength of leadership and faith in that leadership
• Overall strategy to win as well as a clear definition of what the organization is trying to win at
• A clear understanding, at each level and group within the organization, what part that group plays in the execution of that strategy
• What organizational support and infrastructure will be put in place to ensure the successful execution of that strategy
• Whether the right people are in the right places in the organization in order to make sure everything happens

Strength of Leadership, Faith in Leadership

The larger an organization gets, the less likely that success will happen spontaneously. This is because the greater the size of an organization, the greater the amount of organizational entropy. People are naturally motivated by different things and move in different directions. The more people you have, the greater the variety of motivations, and the greater amounts of pull in different directions. In a small startup of 10 people, it is much easier to get everyone on board and pulling in the same direction as compared to an organization of 10,000 people. What this means is that the greater the size of the organization, the stronger the leadership has to be in order to guide the organization towards a common goal. But that much is common sense, and should not come as a surprise.

Something just as important that doesn’t usually get as much attention however, is an organization’s faith in that leadership. An organization’s faith in its leadership is directly correlated with the leadership’s ability to align that organization towards a common goal. When there is faith, the people will tend to trust the direction set by the leadership and spend more time executing and less time second guessing. When there is little faith, every ambiguity or setback is an excuse to question the leadership’s judgment. It is extremely difficult to align on anything in such an environment.

That being the case, what are the characteristics leaders might exhibit that might either increase or decrease people’s faith in them? Among them are:

Openness and Honesty - It is easy enough to be open and honest when times are good, but what about when times aren’t so good? Intelligent and informed people have a low tolerance to anyone or anything they perceive as being less than completely truthful. Attempts to sugarcoat or withhold information tend to decrease trust in such people. Telling it like it is, no matter how bad the situation is, and owning up to mistakes, will buy more trust.

Decisiveness - Are the leaders willing and able to make tough decisions or are they trying their best not to rock the boat? Are they willing to make real changes that are needed (and might be difficult) in order to win or are they content to shift people around and hope for the best?

Informed - Do leaders make decisions based on the best information available? Do they strive to learn from their previous mistakes or do they just try something new if the previous plan didn’t work as expected? Are they taking known and calculated risks or are they just going with their gut? How thorough are they in verifying the correctness of the assumptions that their decisions are based upon?

Strategy to Win

Strategy is not just what you want to do in order to succeed. It must also take into account the conditions of the environment and your organization’s ability to execute within that environment. You want to be the number one sprocket maker in the world? Great. Is this a good time in the market to be making sprockets? Does your competitor have a sprocket making advantage that you don’t? Are you able to even put enough focus on sprocket making given than most of your people are tied up working on spindles?

An organization that it’s on a path towards winning should be able to say exactly what it’s going to win at. It should also be able to clearly articulate how it’s going to win, under the conditions of the market, its competitors, and its own internal capabilities, both current and future. “Cutting costs” doesn’t tell me how you’re going to win. “Focus on innovation” doesn’t do it either. What you need to tell me is a viable story of how you’re going to get from point A (where the organization currently is) to point B (the organization winning).

Having a viable strategy isn’t nearly enough of course. The strategy should be well communicated to as much of the organization as practical so that people at all levels of the organization will be able to plan and act in accordance with it. In addition, the fact that the leadership has a solid and viable strategy should not be kept a secret, advertently or not. The fact that such a strategy exists, and is well disseminated, and is openly acted upon by all levels of the organization will help to align the organization under a common purpose and give the people a better sense that the organization knows what it is doing. Conversely, if most people in the organization don’t know how they’re supposed to win, we go back to the problem of lack of faith in the leadership and different people pulling in different directions.

Strategy Elaborated

An organization’s single, common strategy to win must be driven from the top. Indeed, it can be argued that it is one of the leadership team’s most important responsibilities. However, for any larger organization, the top level strategy will not be enough to derive a complete execution plan. The top level strategy by necessity will be too abstract, and it will be up to every level and group in the organization to elaborate upon the portion of the strategy provided to him or her from one level up.

Since organizations are typically already organized hierarchically from abstract to well defined responsibilities, the same organizational structure can be used to elaborate a top level strategy into appropriately detailed strategies and plans at every level of the organization. Not only does this allow the organization as a whole to “fill in the gaps” of the high level strategy, it helps unite the entire organization under one common purpose and goal.

The importance of being able to understand, for any individual, how his work contributes to the company’s overall strategy to win, seems like common sense. But too often it breaks down, and people once again have difficulty understanding how their work relates to the success of the company overall. There are many things that can contribute to this breakdown, but there are two things that often fail to happen to help ensure that breakdown doesn’t occur:

1. People at every level of the organization are responsible for elaborating and developing the strategy at their own level with his/her peers and manager such that the strategy at that level aligns with and supports the strategy one level above.
2. People at every level of the organization are responsible for clearly articulating how the strategy at its own level fits into the organization’s overall strategy to the organization one level below.

If both conditions are met at all levels of the organization, there should be little question as to why any work is being done or how it relates to the organization as a whole.

Ensuring Success

Everything mentioned above has mostly to do with planning. But planning is only part of the equation. The other important part (and some would argue more important part) is execution. Defining a strategy is good, and clearly communicating that strategy as well as elaborating it at all levels in the organization is also clearly good. But how well will the organization execute it? Furthermore, how will we know how well the organization is executing, for when we need to make adjustments when something doesn’t go according to plan, either due to internal or external factors? Finally, how will we know the strategy is even working at all (that is, helping the organization to win)?

The feedback mechanisms that will indicate how well a strategy is being executed and whether or not changes need to be considered, need to be thought up as part of the execution plan, not after the fact. Again, this needs to happen at all levels of the organization, with the level of detail appropriate to that particular level. This is more important for larger organizations than smaller ones because large organizations have much more momentum once it gets going in a given direction, and it becomes more difficult to change course as a result. Often times, by the time you realize a need to change in a large company, it becomes too late to implement that change effectively. Smaller companies are generally more nimble and can afford to make changes without nearly as much damage. Changes in large organizations are generally much more costly. But still, change is necessary. No organization, big or small, will get it right the first time, and the environment changes regardless of how well thought out its plans are. The key then, is to reduce the cost of change by implementing change early enough, before too much momentum has set in, and implementing change only where they are necessary. Both these mean proper instrumentation of the organization so that flags are raised when they should be and that the right information will be available to make the right decisions when the time comes.

The Right People

If there is one thing that makes all of the above even possible is having the right people in the right position at all levels in the organization. Strategy communication, buy-in, elaboration, execution, and feedback needs to happen at all levels of the organization. If one link in the organizational hierarchy isn’t up to the task, it’s very difficult to guarantee the results of the organizational levels below him. The best you can hope for is that his department manages to stumble forward in spite of him. In the worst case, his department can actually subtract from the organization’s overall ability to execute due to conflicting priorities, dependencies, or even just distractions.

This aspect makes it especially difficult for large organizations because the reality is, finding the “right people” to fill the right positions is incredibly difficult. There just aren’t that many “right people” to go around. But even given the situation, the best attempt must be made. No amount of clever planning or strategy will make up for not having capable people in key positions to drive that strategy forward.

We’ve already established that every level within the organization should have a strategy and plan with the level of detail appropriate to that level. What’s also needed is to have the right people drive the key aspects of the strategy at every level. While not everyone within a given group needs to be a superstar, there will aspects in any plan or strategy that will be more critical to the overall success than others, either because of important dependencies or because of high cost of failure. It is the manager’s responsibility, at every level, to make sure these positions are staffed by capable people. And if the manager can’t do that, for whatever reason, then he can’t guarantee his results to his manager either, and a flag should be raised.

Putting It All Together

It should be noted that the topics mentioned all go hand in hand. It will be common for most companies to have one or 2 of the bases covered, but that by itself is not enough. I came to this realization in my previous company, when I raised the need to have an overall vision for the company several times. After hearing the need not only from me but from other people in the company as well, our CEO finally relented and spent time formulating and articulating his vision for the company. And it was an intriguing vision too. Unfortunately, operation wise, the company did not execute significantly better after the vision was established. Because outside of now having a shared vision, nothing else in the company really changed. The vision was necessary, but not sufficient.

Strength of leadership, having a viable strategy, elaborating that strategy throughout the organization, providing the infrastructure to support strategy execution, and having the right people are all necessary, in my opinion, to make real progress towards winning. It is not enough to say your company has only one or two of the five bases covered, or even all of the bases somewhat covered. A thorough analysis of where your company may fall short in each of these areas, and how to address those shortcomings, may also be required.