VISION TO ACTIVITIES: Making implementation Simpler!

The organizations worldwide have these two common concerns:

1) The strategy formulated by the top management is far from the changing realities of the market

2) And if the strategy formulated is in accordance with market realities, it is becoming difficult to translate it to the operational level and hence they remain only in the strategy documents of the company.

The strategy formulation has these standard steps: Defining Vision, Mission, Core Values and Objectives for the organization.

The difficult part is to convert objectives into workable units i.e. strategy implementation becomes a challenge for the Senior Management. Balance Score Card is one good tool in this direction. I am sharing my experience of maintaining Balance Score Card at my organization. 

1) Convert Objectives into SMART Goals: The objectives direct towards the goal definition. The goals should have the below elements: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound.

2) Percentage contribution of different Goals to a particular objective: The % contribution of the goals to the particular objective needs to be analyzed by the Senior Management in accordance with their past experience.

3) Conduct ‘Synergy’ meets to get Ideas: The people at the operations level face the ground level challenge related to different functions in the organization. Ideas from them will be vital to the success of the organization. Conducting ‘Synergy’ meets at regular intervals and gathering ideas from them will lead to a priceless repository of potential future initiatives.

4) Map Ideas to Goals: Map the ideas to the goals it intends to satisfy and rate them majorly on two factors (These factors can be different for different businesses): a) Effectiveness of the Idea to achieve Goal, b) Impact of the Idea on the Goal

5) Qualify Idea to Initiatives: After rating Ideas on the above two parameters, discuss and make some rules (on the basis of your organizational preference) to qualify these ideas to the initiatives.

6) Choose among initiatives: Previous step will give handful of ideas which have potential to become initiatives. Rate those ideas on the different parameters derived from the focus on customers, finance, internal processes and people.

7) Prepare a Work Breakdown Structure: After the initiative qualifies, break it down to the activities to be performed with the Responsibilities, End Date, Duration, Completion Status etc. mentioned.

This 7 step process has converted the broad level vision into the doable activities with clear-cut responsibilities to perform.