As I wrote in my last post, I'm starting this multi-part series of blogs assuming the Strategy Creation phase is complete. This is partly because my expertise is more significant after this stage but also because I'm well aware of the turmoil, friction, and bitter disagreement that can arise when discussing strategy vs strategy planning vs goal-setting and what each means. It is akin to what came first, the chicken or the egg. I like distinguishing the flow as such:
Let’s dive right into deployment, as this will be the central theme over the next few blogs, each tackling a different aspect.
Deployment is an unusual word you don't always hear in Business. In the Military? Absolutely. A massive rollout of new technology across a region? On occasion. However, deployment is typically one of those generic words that doesn't garner much excitement or interest when it comes to business. What a missed opportunity. I’ll do my best to connect some dots.
In this case, I usually consider strategy deployment to be communicating the strategy and the specifics of the short-term goals, including ownership, in a clear and concise format that is often more relatable to employees. While not specifically called out, there should be a general outline of how the goals will be accomplished, although that will be more closely measured and tracked in the execution phase.
How often do companies go from the longer-term (or even shorter-term) goal to execution without explaining the ‘why’? Or even without identifying and aligning the effort and impact these decisions will have. It’s often called “go time” or “get ‘er done.” I’ve seen the fallout from this approach. Silos, people misunderstanding the goal and moving in different directions, doing nothing as it isn’t clear or believing it’s the “flavour of the day,” and ridiculing leadership for not involving people in the path forward as “leadership” doesn’t understand the obstacles and challenges. Do any of these ring a bell? If not, you’ve got it aced and can likely ignore the rest of these writings.
Let’s examine how a fictional company, Concentric Circle Corp (CCC), a mid-sized technology firm looking to scale its business, can use Balanced Scorecards, OKRs, or Hoshin Kanri to Drive Success.
One of the first steps to successfully executing a strategy is selecting the correct short-term goals and having a concise and understandable tool to share progress with the organization. In this regard, every company, whether a startup, SMB, or established enterprise, needs a clear and focused strategy deployment framework. Without one, even the best-laid strategies fall apart in execution.
At CCC, the leadership team has established three key short-term goals for the upcoming year, all in line with the company’s BHAG and supporting strategy.
Sales Growth: Improve customer acquisition and retention to increase revenue by 15% while maintaining profitability. In parallel, they will also identify and complete due diligence on two acquisition targets, at least one in a vertical where CCC does not currently compete.
Technology Innovation: Upgrade internal and external systems to enhance customer efficiency, application performance, readiness for advanced AI applications, and data security.
People Development: Launch a leadership training program to develop future company leaders to support best-in-class employees at all levels.
Setting goals is one thing—tracking, measuring, and achieving them is another. To ensure alignment and execution, CCC is evaluating three popular strategy deployment frameworks:
1. Balanced Scorecard (BSC)
Developed by Kaplan and Norton in the early 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard helps organizations track strategic objectives through four perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning and Growth. The BSC intends to ensure that a company considers financial and non-financial measures when evaluating its performance against its strategy.
Briefly, each perspective can be described as:
Financial Perspective: Measures financial performance, such as revenue growth, profitability, and cost efficiency, to ensure the organization achieves its financial objectives.
Customer Perspective: To sustain a competitive advantage, it prioritizes building long-term relationships, enhancing customer experience, and adapting to evolving market demands.
Internal Process Perspective: Assesses the efficiency and effectiveness of internal operations, including innovation, production, and service delivery, to drive business success.
Learning & Growth Perspective: Strengthens workforce capabilities, fosters a culture of innovation, and leverages technology to drive future business transformation and adaptability.
Here's how CCC could use BSC with the example goals:
Financial Perspective:
Increase revenue by 15% (Sales Growth goal)
Gross Margin Performance (the right Sales Growth)
Execute Due Diligence timeline
Customer Perspective:
Improve customer retention by x% by enhancing support and service.
Upgrade external systems to improve application performance by 100% and reduce downtime by y%.
Internal Processes:
Upgrade internal security systems to eliminate all identified security and privacy risks, with no breaches over the year.
Develop version 1 (internal testing) of two new advanced AI-based applications, with one ready for customer launch by Q1 of next year.
Learning & Growth:
Implement leadership development program by Q2
Have the 1st wave of employees undergo the training (pilot) by the end of the year.
Visually, this would resemble (open in a new tab for a better view):
Pros of BSC:
✔️ Provides a holistic view of company performance.
✔️ Ensures alignment across departments.
✔️ Encourages tracking of both financial and non-financial metrics.
✔️ A clean and concise visual representation.
Cons of BSC:
❌ Can be complex to implement if teams aren't familiar with it.
❌ May not have the same level of agility as other frameworks.
❌ Prone to allow too many objectives.
❌ Aligning goals to perspectives can be difficult or controversial.
As you can see, the goals can be split amongst different perspectives. I’ve always advocated for less than ten items on a BSC. Otherwise, you begin to have competing priorities, and team confusion can arise over the real priorities. Is it feasible to get all of them accomplished if more than ten? Are some better left at a division or business unit BSC? Those are some of the questions to be asked.
In my experience, although the four perspectives are quite established, adjusting them to suit the organization’s needs is still flexible. I’ve seen adjusting the number of perspectives to three or five and renaming those perspectives to align closer to the company’s interests or industry. A healthcare example uses the four perspectives of Performance (financial), Patient (customer), Process (internal process), and People (learning and growth), which is called, yes, 4P. Ensure consistency of perspectives; they shouldn’t need to change once established, as the perspectives are broad enough to cover the scope of the company’s long-term goals and purpose.
The next time, I'll elaborate on and walk through OKRs and Hoshin Kanri.
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