5 tips to battle strategy execution complexity

“External complexity creates business opportunities. Internal complexity slowly kills them.”

Complexity is the CO² of the modern business world. We all have heard of it, we all produce it, it’s harmful to the business environment and companies tend to ignore it when money is to be made. But unlike CO², there’s no public opinion to point out the dangers. There’s no Al Gore on stage pointing out the dangers. Yes, there’re some companies out there with enlightened leaders who have embraced simplification and installed a company culture that fights against ever-growing complexity. But they’re the exception. Most of us live in a complex world where simplicity isn’t on the agenda.

The strategy execution process is often too complex as well. Here are 5 tips to reduce strategy execution complexity:

Tip 1. Adapt for size  

You don’t need a cannon to kill a mosquito, but it might be useful to have a good tranquilizer gun if you want to transport a tiger. Adapt your tools to your needs. All too often, companies forget this logic. A small business unit that is part of a big multinational does not always benefit from the fully-fledged corporate performance management process that works great for the other business units 10 times its size. Harmonizing doesn’t mean copying without thinking.

Tip 2. Check for complexity indicators

Most companies started off with a fairly straightforward, simple and pragmatic performance management process. But they somehow succeeded in complicating it over time. But how? Probably for one of the following reasons:

•     A new manager arrived and implemented an approach that worked very well… in his former company.
•     Corporate launched a new model and wanted everyone to follow it.
•     Various consultants came (and went), each with their own tools and ideologies.
•     Someone got a kick out of complex theoretical models.
•     Someone wanted to create something completely new.
•     Someone decided that everything needed to be integrated.
•     …And nobody eliminated outdated material.

Tip 3. Eliminate ‘dead wood’

In order to make a forest grow, you need to eliminate smaller trees so that the ones that survive can grow faster as they have more light. The same is true in organisations. If you want to launch something new, it’s crucial to weed out the old stuff so that they don’t take away the attention from the people in the organisation. If you don’t, it’s a deadly complexity sin. And there are lots of sinners.

We once found 42 items (documents, templates, manuals etc) related to the same individual objective-setting process in one organisation. In all of these documents, five different frameworks were promoted ranging from SMART to some ‘PHD-level’ drawings that probably only the designer understood. A little over half (23 to be precise) were linked to old talent management processes and therefore completely obsolete (but still readily available on the HR intranet site as nobody took the time to replace them with the new ones). There were three versions of the process that the company identified as ‘the right one’ in circulation – the draft version that should never have been released, the initial launch version from the first year and version 2.0 that came out earlier that year.

A large or medium-sized company often has lots of great methodologies, tools and systems that have been piling up over the years, or even decades, each (hopefully) having been useful at some point in time. Today, however, the strategy execution process looks like a house originally constructed as a simple two-bedroom building in the 1970s that has since seen the addition of 27 new rooms in 18 different styles. Make an inventory of all existing material and sort them into three groups:

1. Essentials that you want to continue to use.
2. The non-essentials, but nice to haves.
3. And last, but not least… all the duplicates and outdated materials and methodologies.

It also helps to get away from your desk and talk to managers in the field. They will give you valuable insights into the usability of the materials and methodologies – something you can’t figure out just by looking at documents.

Tip 4. Have a clear vision on automation

It’s a smart idea to automate the whole or part of your performance management process… but with care. In many cases, the ambition to automate the process is the positive driver at the start of a Strategy Execution upgrade programme but the bottleneck the year after. Let me give you an example.

Imagine that you want to automate part of the individual objective-setting process. You start by selecting a software package. You launch an expensive IT project to customise the solution. Nine months later, you receive many suggestions (and complaints) from managers regarding the user-friendliness of the software. After a closer look, you decide they are right and agree the underlying process needs to change. But that would demand, yet again, some quite extensive IT system changes. You find it inappropriate to launch a new IT project as the previous one was more expensive than anticipated. So you decide to wait.

I would suggest you either choose a standard software solution and change your process or postpone automation until you are 100 percent happy with the underlying process.

Tip 5. Always test first

Whether you introduce a new strategy execution methodology, tool or training session, make sure you test it thoroughly before implementation. Run several pilots. Use waves of implementation. Here’s why this is the best way forwards:

• A small change can have a big effect. You can’t predict this at the beginning, even with the best preparation in the world. Therefore you should always do a dry run before implementation.
• It takes time to make your initial idea simple. Even if you get it right, there are always easier ways to do things. You will only see this once you have started and actually tried to do it.
• It takes time for people to change their behavior.

Be your own guinea pig. Before any launch, make sure you try everything yourself and are happy with the results. Don’t stop at the template. Come up with best-practice examples. If you, the inventor, is unable to correctly use the newly designed document and come up with some great examples, what are the chances that others will be able to do it better?

Good luck!

Want to know more about strategy execution? Check out the complete guide.