An office for strategy management
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GOVERNANCE starts from the top, with strategy formulation. In the exercise of the enterprise leadership functions, the leader needs to articulate and put forward an enterprise vision (consistent with the enterprise’s core purpose and core values). The vision then has to be beefed up with a road map and its necessary corollary: A set of enterprise performance scorecards.
Strategy formulation is never enough; it does not work by itself. Unless it is backed up and substantiated by an operative commitment to strategy execution, nothing gets accomplished. It is for the sake of getting things done that the process of cascading is undertaken: This leads to several support performance scorecards coming from departments and their attached operating units; and it causes the formation of different operating teams, from clusters down to value aligned circles. Each of these teams is tasked with the responsibility of delivering actual results, and eventually helping bring about the outcomes associated with the enterprise performance scorecards.
For strategy execution to deliver actual results and desired outcomes, one thing is absolutely necessary: For the leadership to set up an empowered, fully supported office for strategy management (OSM).
The OSM works under the direct auspices of the leader of the enterprise. It reports directly to the head of agency, the City Mayor, or the corporate CEO. Its main tasks include the following:
Ensuring that the cascading process is not a one-off initiative. Internal communication in order to keep winning hearts and minds for the enterprise vision has to be sustained. Moreover, such communication, pitched to all personnel at all levels of the enterprise, aims at making the governance program a live and intensely participatory process.
Ensuring that the performance scorecard system runs objectively, professionally, and fairly. First and foremost, a keen eye has to be kept on performance related to the enterprise performance scorecard. Then, all the supporting performance scorecards, from those of departments down to their last attached operating units, cohere with each other and are fully supportive of the targets in the enterprise performance scorecard. Moreover, a system of rewards and encouragements needs to be put in place – and made to work fairly – such that every office within the enterprise is on board as the enterprise journeys towards its final destination.
Ensuring that the power of teams, from clusters down to value aligned circles, is tapped and deployed for enterprise cohesion and effectiveness in travelling towards the realization of the enterprise vision. A short-term focus on small gains and improvements – harvesting low-lying fruits, for instance – has to be connected to, and related with, the longer-term strategic direction of the enterprise.
The terms of reference for the OSM would impose, on the relatively few officers assigned to this office, more than heavy and awesome responsibilities. It is absolutely necessary that these officers are not weighed down by purely operational, day-to-day duties, not closely connected with the demands of executing enterprise strategy. It is a sure sign of genuine commitment to making the governance program for an enterprise succeed if and when the leadership exercises the needed discipline to keep the leader’s OSM focused on the manifold demands of strategy execution.