Sherpa Alliance

 If your experience is anything like mine, conventional “strategic planning and implementation” doesn’t work well and, often times, the word “execution” is used inter-changeably with “implementation”, relegating it to the level of detailed planning, tactics and dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s.  In these uncertain, turbulent times, we need to understand the whole problem and solution of our organizational agility, reframing things with execution as the whole, of which the “strategy process” is a part.  The Execution Excellence model is such an integrated system and a discipline.  Notice also, that we choose the words “strategy process” carefully (as opposed to “strategic planning”) to convey that it must be an ongoing process.

Execution Excellence is complicated, as there are a lot of moving parts which have to be operating in unison as an “architecture of execution”.  If everything is clicking well, we create traction.  If there are disconnects we get wheel spin (Reducing Wheel$pin & Increasing Tra¢tion, for cents on the dollar).  In the face of that complexity, many executives give up in moving through that complexity to achieve the mastery of elegant simplicity on the other side, adopting stupid simplicity on this side of complexity instead (Simplicity & Complexity).  That can sound something like, “it’s too complicated, we’ll just focus on … [fill in the blank]” or “we tried strategic planning and it didn’t work”, or “our business is too fast moving and we like to keep things organic around here”.

Our process addresses the whole problem and solution of organizational agility and architecting breakthrough journeys, called “Breakthrough Programs” and “Hybrid Programs”.  Our process is not a linear, step-wise, cookie-cutter approach.  Instead, it is about judging where you are at in your journey, assessing the priority opportunities for improvement and concurrently engineering the next phase of a breakthrough journey, creating traction and building momentum on a higher road trajectory.

When I teach MBAs, I give them one of 5 scenarios to work on in teams, each of which I faced at one time or another in my career:

·         A turnaround

·         A merger

·         A promotion to running the Division

·         A major acquisition

·         Loss of competitiveness of a core software product

I give them a template to formulate their game-plan for the first few hours, days, weeks, months and quarters on the job.

The point of the exercise is that there isn’t a one size fits all approach.  Each demands journey-judgment – judging where we are at in the journey and what are the most traction creating things we can do to unlock, uplift and unfold the higher road of a breakthrough journey.