Implementing your strategy and its priorities should be an exciting and engaging project for everyone in your organization. 

Everyone's contribution makes a difference. However, certain conditions are essential for success.

I want to draw your attention to two excellent articles highlighting these conditions.

With Goals, FAST Beats SMART

(Donald Sull and Charles Sull, MIT Sloan, 2018)

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/with-goals-fast-beats-smart

To ensure organizational alignment with your strategy and strategic priorities, define your goals in FAST terms, not SMART terms. 

This article is essential for deploying your strategy and aligning your organization.

F - Frequency of review and discussion of goals and results

A - Ambitious goals and the motivation to achieve results

S - Specific and tangible measures of results

T - Transparent goals, visible to all, allowing everyone to assess efforts, coordination, and alignment.

Transparency, in short, can foster strategic alignment without resorting to a time-intensive process of cascading goals down the chain of command.

The power of specific, ambitious goals to improve the performance of individuals and teams is one of the best documented findings in organizational psychology, and has been replicated in more than 500 studies over the past 50 years.

Adding a set of metrics for each goal and providing frequent feedback on progress can further improve results.

This article highlights empirical measures supporting the goal-setting and measurement process. The authors discuss the links that exist between work motivation and innovation opportunities. 

A must-read to improve your strategy deployment and alignment.

The Execution Trap

(Roger Martin, Harvard Business Review, 2010)

https://hbr.org/2010/07/the-execution-trap

Martin questions the separation between those who make strategy and those who execute it.

Making a distinction between strategy and execution can do great damage to a corporation.

He debunks this myth (a mistake in 2010, still a mistake in 2024) and explains the negative impacts of this false separation. 

Instead, he highlights an approach where different stakeholders have a key role to play in formulating and deploying the strategy. 

In 2024 language, we're talking about co-developing the strategy.

He suggests that we think in terms of a cascade for deployment:

Those at the top of the company make the broader, more abstract choices involving larger, long-term investments, whereas the employees toward the bottom make more concrete, day-to-day decisions that directly influence customer service and satisfaction.

This approach promotes decision-making and deployment by considering everyone's sphere of influence, enabling strategic action at every level of the organization. 

This facilitates alignment and the involvement of the organization's strengths.

Choices are adapted to each level of the organization to achieve the organization's ambition and strategy. Martin proposes a more cohesive and engaging approach than the "bureaucratic" separation of "them" / "us".

It is a must-read to integrate strategy deployment into your strategic thinking.

Have a good week