Executing Your Strategy (Morgan, Levitt, Malek, 2007)

Why do businesses consistently fail to execute their competitive strategies? Because leaders don't identify and invest in the full range of projects and programs required to align the organization with its strategy. Moreover, even when strategy makers do break their plans down into doable chunks, they seldom work with project leaders to prioritize strategic investments and assure that needed resources are applied in priority order. And they often neglect to revise the strategic portfolio to fit the demands of a dynamic environment, or to stay connected to strategic projects through completion, as new products, services, skills and capabilities are transferred into operations.

In Executing Your Strategy, Mark Morgan, Raymond Levitt, and William Malek present six imperatives that enable you to do the right strategic projects--and do those projects right. And it is no accident that the six imperatives combine to create the acronym INVEST:

Ideation: Clarify and communicate Purpose, Identity and Long Range Intention

Nature: Develop alignment between Strategy, Structure and Culture based on Ideation

Vision: Create clear Goals and Metrics aligned to Strategy and guided by Ideation

Engagement: Do the right projects based on the Strategy through Portfolio management

Synthesis: Do Projects and Programs right, in alignment with Portfolio

Transition: Move the Project and Program outputs into Operations where benefit is realized

Full of intriguing company examples and practical advice, this crucial new resource shows you how to make strategy happen in your organization

About the Author
Mark Morgan is Chief Learning Officer at IPSolutions Inc. and Practice Director of the Stanford Advanced Project Management Program (SAPM). Raymond Levitt is a Professor in Stanford's School of Engineering and Academic Director of SAPM. William Malek is an independent consultant, educator and trainer, former CEO of IPSolutions, Inc., and SAPM Program Director from 2002 to 2006.

[JLJ - p.18 Without a systematic framework, strategic execution deteriorates to a game of "whack-a-mole."

From Wikipedia, The connotation of "Whac-a-mole" or "Whack-a-mole" in colloquial usage is that of a repetitious and futile task: each time the attacker is "whacked" or kicked off a service, he only pops up again from another direction. The term has been used in the computer and networking industry to describe the phenomenon of fending off recurring spammers, vandals or miscreants. It is also used in the military to refer to opposing troops who keep re-appearing. This use has been common in the Iraq War in reference to the difficulty of defeating the Iraqi insurgency.]

p.11 Strategic execution requires a systemwide approach that consistently drives organizations to do the right things - and to do those things right.

p.15 Engagement, as we have already noted, creates the crucial dynamic translation between strategy and action, by integrating action with intent.

p.17 the engagement domain... links the strategy developed in the strategy-making domains of ideation, vision, and nature with the portfolio of projects to be executed in the synthesis and transition domains of executing strategy.

p.18 Without a systematic framework, strategic execution deteriorates to a game of "whack-a-mole." ... As the [children's arcade] game starts, moles pop up through holes in the game board directly in front of the player. Each player is given a club - a "mole whacker." ... The object of the game is to whack the mole on the head before he drops back in his hole. The person who hits the most moles wins a fabulous prize... Whack-a-mole presents a direct analogy to corporate life... Interestingly, the results can be strikingly similar between the arcade game and the organizational version... The arcade game stops... The organizational game keeps on going, day after day of whacking moles

p.20 Our goal in this book is to explore the central role of engaging in strategic project portfolio management for successful execution... When organizations use the framework to select, align, and manage their strategic project portfolios, everyone at every level knows how to invest every available resource every day.

p.86 Leading indicators: What things will tell us whether we are making progress toward reaching the outcomes?

p.141,143 What differentiates one organization from another in terms of strategic execution is the discipline of engaging the strategy with the tailored portfolio of projects and programs that will bring it to life... We call this engagement because the company can only commit to its espoused strategy by engaging in the appropriate project portfolio... Engagement directs the scarce resources of time, money, equipment, and attention to the right mix of projects and programs... Engagement, then is the central imperative of strategic execution. To state the imperative another way: get your investment governance right, choose the right projects, and endow the projects with the resources they need to be done right... engage strategy through the project investment scheme.

p.144 In large measure, the success or failure of strategic execution rests on how an organization governs its project portfolio.

p.164-165 The prioritization process establishes what we would like to do. The crux of engagement lies in connecting that list with the reality of what we are able to do. That's why the next step in the engagement imperative is to understand the organization's actual capacity to do the prioritized work... few truly plan according to the realities of human resource capacity.

p.169 planning processes often take place with less than perfect data. We can never plan past the horizon of our knowledge; however, we can plan out to that horizon and replan as we gain more information.

p.255 getting started is not about adding complexity: It's about finding clarity.

Enter supporting content here