Transforming Strategies into Actions

It's that time of the year when senior management revealed the business plans of their respective organizations complete with business goals, performance targets and measures as well as the corresponding implementation strategies. While many strategic documents are impressive in form and intent, a great number of organization failed in implementing their strategies. Kaplan and Norton estimated that 70% of these failed cases was caused by bad execution.

From my experience as a strategy advisor, bad execution is caused by the absence of or a lack in seven (7) key competencies on the part of a manager. What is needed is the implementing manager possessing the following P-ACTION competencies in Project Management, Achievement Orientation, Change Leadership, Building Trust, Information Seeking, Sense of Ownership, and Networking to ensure effective implementation of all planned strategic initiatives. A brief description of each competency is as follows:

• Project Management - The P-ACTION manager must have project management skills to ensure no cost overruns, timely completion of tasks and activities, and delivery of high quality products and services to customers.
  
• Achievement Orientation - The P-ACTION manager is motivated by a passion to achieve result excellence. The greater the challenge, the higher the level of satisfaction and joy in accomplishing desired results.
  
• Change Leadership - The P-ACTION manager not only initiates and implements change programmes but also encourages creativity and innovation by team members to overcome obstacles. In addition, she is also flexible and adapt to change by meeting challenges and opposing demands caused by external environment.
  
• Building Trust - The PACTION manager operates with transparency and communicates openly. He provides an environment encouraging colleagues, customers and suppliers to talk and act without fear of repercussion.
• Information Seeking - The P-ACTION manager is driven by a desire to know more about all matters and people related to the tasks at hand by asking questions beyond those required in the job.
• Sense of Ownership - The P-ACTION manager possesses a sense of ownership by thinking and behaving like the business owner who maximises all potential opportunities and yet at the same time, protects the organization against all possible risks. He also is accountable for all actions. For those managers in the government and non-profit organizations, the equivalent competency is the sense of stewardship.
  
• Networking - The P-ACTION manager builds relationships with team members, peers, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders. This network of relationships with internal and external parties is useful to obtain information, identify opportunities, and seek differing opinions and feedback to problems and issues at hand.

Project Management is a technical/functional competency. The leadership/managerial competencies are Change Leadership, Building Trust, Information Seeking and Networking whereas the remaining two competencies of Achievement Orientation and Sense of Ownership are behavioral in nature. Both the technical and managerial competencies can be developed through specially-tailored skill enhancement training courses. However, developing the desired behavioral competencies is much more challenging and takes much longer time as it involves a change in attitude and mindset. This could be achieved through proper coaching, mentoring and facilitation by an experienced senior manager acting as a role model.

Many organizations made mistakes of formulating business goals, strategies and related performance targets, allocating necessary financial resources to acquire people and facilities and then hoping every manager executes as expected. However, most of them tend to overlook the importance of having the P-ACTION managers to transform corporate strategies into business results. Without the P-ACTION managers , these organizations are likely candidates in the same mold as those failed cases studied by Kaplan and Norton.