Strategy Implementation Road Map (SIR)

Too often leaders are asked to implement strategy but are not provided the road map to do so. The Institute has developed the Strategy Implementation Road Map(C) (SIR), as part of its body of knowledge. The SIR outlines the training course and provides a step-by-step guide on “how” to implement a strategy. It covers the key areas that an implementation professional needs to know and outlines the required skills.

SIR is circular as you can start anywhere. It consists of the seven components required to be successful in strategy implementation. The components make up the modules for the certification to become a Strategy Implementation Professional.

The center of SIR shows the four stages for the seven components:

Crafting

Leaders start to prepare for the implementation by considering how to communicate and engage the whole organization. This includes focusing on gaining awareness of the new strategy, explaining why the organization needs to change, aligning activities, allocating resources, assessing the organization culture, identifying measures and new skills people require among others.

Embedding

After the strategy is launched, leaders focus on gaining traction, building momentum and changing the way it operates. They do this by synchronizing projects, allocating budgets to strategic initiatives, aligning roles and responsibilities, identifying resource requirements, adopting technology and developing the discipline to take the required and corrective actions.

Executing

The focus is to now ensure the organization continues to transform to the new way of working so as to deliver the strategy. By this point, the new strategy is becoming the current way of working. Key activities include ensuring key business decisions and financial investments are positioned to the strategy, reviewing external partners’ performance, regularly reviewing actions internally, supporting middle managers and leveraging measures to drive the implementation.

Sustaining

The financial benefits of the strategy now start to flourish as the organization completes its implementation. The time this takes for each organization of course varies depending on the strategy, culture and business. Activities in this stage include reviewing the business model, reviewing changes to the initial strategy and recognizing and adapting to shifts in trends and culture.

The seven components that make up the course modules are:

Leadership Excellence

Leaders don’t implement. A leader’s role in strategy implementation is to drive and champion it. The employees are the ones taking the implementation actions every day. Leaders need to stay engaged throughout the implementation, constantly be inspiring and coaching their employees while overseeing and tracking the implementation.

Value Creation

To goal is to create value for all stakeholders. The organizations who are successful in implementing their strategy potentially recognize a tremendous payoff, as they succeed where of their competition are failing.

Business Model

Adopting a new strategy means changing the business model. Sometimes changes are minor and other times they require a whole business model transformation, e.g., adopting digitalization. But the business model must change to support the implementation.

Stakeholder Management

The initial challenge is to present the new strategy to the whole organization. In this module, you are introduced to how this can be effectively done by teasing internal stakeholders and having leaders recognize that the launch is only 15% of the overall implementation communication goals. Too frequently in stakeholder management, communication around the implementation dissipates after the first six months. This module places a heavy emphasis on nurturing the communications throughout the whole implementation journey.

Culture Evolution

Culture drives the way an organization implements its strategy. Two organizations can have the same strategy but how they implement will always be different as in every organization, the culture is different. Culture no longer eats strategy for breakfast because of the speed we are working today. Strategy now drives the culture in many organizations and that drives the way leaders must implement.

Employee Engagement

The level of employees who are disengaged in their work is surprisingly high in many countries and industries. If your employees are disengaged, it is extremely difficult to inspire them to implement, which requires doing more. This is why it’s important to prepare employees with the right implementation attitude, knowledge and skills.

Track Performance

Taking corrective along the way is critical for success. But how do you know where you are and what action to take if you are not diligently tracking your performance throughout the whole implementation journey? Too many leaders start off with the right intentions but somewhere between thought and actions, they lose focus and commitment. Tracking performance is an essential discipline. This module focuses on ensuring the organization has the right measures in place to manage the implementation and the discipline to constantly review its performance.