Making Strategy Real - by Don Tapscott

July 2009

Making Strategy Realby Don Tapscott and Paul Barter
Sponsored by SAP ?
In today's competitive global business environment virtually all firms work diligently to analyze alterna-tives and to create a business strategy that enables competitive advantage. Once the strategy has been defined however, 1nine out of ten organizations fail to implement it effectively. Trends such as global-ization, increasingly empowered customers, and rapid and accelerating change make closing the gap between strategy and execution more critical than ever. The current difficult economic environment only increases this imperative. We are no longer living in the "rising tide lifts all boats" world of recent years and effective execution is front and center in the corporation. Today, many boats are sinking.
What is the answer? How can management communicate the strategy effectively and assure that the entire organization has bought in to the strategy and is aligned behind it? Business performance optimization systems are an important tool for success. As corporations are blessed (and cursed) with ever increasing amounts of rapidly changing data, decision-making limited to the executive suite or any one silo in the firm is no longer a viable option. This can lead to strategy disconnected from operations, decisions made without context and a lack of coordination across the organization and throughout the business ecosystem. Utilizing business perfor-mance optimization systems, empowered employees can confidently make timely, strategically aligned decisions based upon facts as opposed to intuition or corporate politics. These tools also enable transparency and act as a basis for enterprise risk management.
These tools can fundamentally change our organizations. The role of management is no longer that of "ultimate decision-maker" but that of "translator" and "coach" who initiates the strategy and define the metrics which bring the efforts of each stakeholder into alignment with the strategy as a whole. Good strategy effectively implemented can provide the sustainable competitive advantage that all organiza-tions aspire to.
Please consider the environment before printing this document © 2009 nGenera CorporationTABLE OF CONTENTS
1 I ntroduction
2 T oday's Performance Reality: Data Driven Decisions 3 N ew concepts and tools of data driven decisions 3 I t all starts with the data
3 M anaging What We Measure
4 E nabling Strategic Agility 5 D riving process efficiency 5 I mproved insight 6 F lexible solutions that support all users 6 T he changing nature and demographics of the workforce 7 B enefits of decentralization 7 I deal degree of decentralization 7 R eaping the benefits of decentralization: the hard data
8 R isk and Transparency
9 C onclusions
10 E ndnotesMaking Strategy Real 1
INTRODUCTION
In the current economic environment, it is easy for managers to These examples don't even begin to describe the breadth of be sceptical about the future. The economic landscape is grim. economic breakthroughs we have seen in recent years. From This year, America's GDP has shrunk 6.2 percent compared to the relentless advances in microprocessor and storage technology, 2 3baseline in 2008, and exports are down by 24 percent. Inter- to the explosive growth of the Internet, innovative new alterna-national trading partners are faring even worse: Germany, Japan, tives to carbon based energy sources and the sequencing of and Mexico's GDPs regressed 14.4 percent, 15.2 percent, and the human genome, innovation is alive and well. The outcome 21.5 percent, respectively. It is also important to remember that of these trends has enabled breakthrough products such as from a firm's perspective, financial performance is a lag indicator the Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii, the Toyota Prius and the 4and that there may be continued challenging times ahead. Tata Nano, the Boeing Dreamliner and the Airbus A380. Firms in all industries are accelerating new product introduction even In China, even state run newspapers are describing "great in this challenging economy. 5uncertainties" on the road ahead. Throughout the world, economies are struggling, and the keystone for renewe... [download for more]