Strategy Execution University

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Jeroen de Flander - The Art of Performance
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Jeroen de Flander - The Art of Performance

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Strategy execution is a crucial but vast knowledge domain. To help you improve your strategy execution skills, here are some great resources.

This useful strategy execution guide with various useful strategy execution articles and templates cover the most important strategy execution challenges.

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Business Strategy & Strategy Execution Articles

Strategy Implementation process: the strategy implementation process is your highway to strategy performance. To be more precise, you should picture your strategy implementation process not as a single street. The strategy implementation process is a network of roads, all linked together. And your roads carry names like ‘strategy review process’, ‘project portfolio management process’, ‘coaching process’, ‘goal setting process’ and so on. This strategy implementation process guide will help you to (1) understand your unique strategy implementation process, (2) evaluate its quality, and (3) select strategy implementation process improvements.

Balanced scorecard: the Balanced Scorecard is “one of most influential management ideas of the past 75 years” according to Harvard Business Review. It provides a framework for translating an abstract strategy into specific, concrete objectives, measures, indicators and actions. It combines a ‘balanced’ (cause/effect) view with a ‘scoring’ (measuring/tracking) view. It focuses on aligning the goals of business units, teams and individual employees with the company’s overall business strategy.

KPI: KPI’s or key performance indicators measure your progress towards your end goal. So, it’s clear that having the right KPI’s are a crucial component to strategy execution success. I see however too many managers getting carried away when they hear the word KPI. Dashboards, traffic lights, …. the more colors, the better. But using KPI’s that way, they can do your organization more harm than good. So the question is: how do you measure strategy progress the right way? What are the KPI’s you need to track your strategy? Here are 6 important KPI tips to focus on. You can use them to challenge existing KPI’s of check the quality for new ones.

Strategy guide for beginners: strategy is a cool word. Business people like to use it. It leaves a good impression with your audience if you talk about strategy. It’s even expected from a certain seniority level in an organization. But strategy is probably also the most over and misused word in business language. Most people who use it don’t really know what strategy is all about. And I often have the impression that the more someone uses the word ‘strategy’ in a conversation, the less they know about the subject. Here’s a list of 7 things every leader should know about strategy. Know these inside out and you will do better than 80 percent of the managers you come across.

Want something more advanced on business strategy or competitive advantage? Check out this article about strategy questions, strategist skills, CSV CSR or Megatrends.

Innovation process: a solid innovation process is crucial. Companies constantly need to reinvent themselves to offer unique value to their clients. It not, their edge starts to erode and they end up in a place they don’t want to be. Just think about Nokia and you know what I mean. But having a great innovation process is much more than being ‘creative’. Most companies find out the hard way. We can’t just drop our brilliant ideas into the existing organization, sit back and wait until they deliver the value we want. In this mini guide, you will discover the three steps of a best-in-class innovation process and learn how to manage the innovation process the right way.

Personal Goals: Personal goals…. they work! The positive results of personal goals are widely supported by substantial research. More than 100 scientific studies involving 40,000 participants from different industries prove personal goals will improve your performance. (And these figures don’t even include any goal-setting research that took place in the world of sport.) To help you set and realize your personal goals in life or at work, here’s a list of 33 tips.

Speaking Skills: strategy communication is an strategy execution cornerstone. One of the basics is to be able to bring your message across on stage. In this guide, professional speaker Jeroen De Flander shares his speaking skills tips and tricks that helped him to become a successful keynote speaker.

Performance Coaching: There are dozens of performance coaching methods out there, some better than others. The good ones will help you as a coach to facilitate learning rather than to direct it. The GROW coaching model – originally conceived by Graham Alexander and further perfected by Sir John Whitmore – is probably the best-known and appreciated coaching framework in the world.

Matrix Structure: almost everyone has one, most managers find matrix structures complex. And it’s hard to find no-nonsense advice on the topic. This mini guide covers the basics of matrix structures but also offers practical tips how to thrive in any matrix organization.

Project Portfolio Management: The following 32 project portfolio management tips will help kick-start your evaluation of your current project portfolio management and the potential improvements you can make during the next six months. They cover: (1) Collect, select and prioritize the right initiatives, (2) Optimize your resource allocation and planning, (3) Develop your project managers, (4) World-class project and program management, and (5) Manage your strategic initiative portfolio.

Skills Development: skills development is crucial to strategy execution success. Being able to do what your competitors can’t, demands a unique set of skills. But these skills don’t just grow on trees. They demand: Tough choices: you can’t be good at everything. Long-term commitment: it doesn’t happen overnight. Motivated people: learning new skills demands effort and a change of behavior. This skills development program guide helps you to build / improve your skills development program.

Awesome Quotes on strategy and more

Quotes: a fun collections of awesome quotes in 10 categories: leadership, success, strategy, innovation, goals,  short quotes, quotes about change, motivational quotes, determination quotes and stress relief quotes.

What is strategy execution?

Strategy execution templates

To advance your strategy execution process, you can download all templates at the bottom of this page. To get guidance using each template, check out the following strategy execution guides:

Implementation Plan Template: Strategy implementation is a crucial component to strategy success. But often, it’s the strategy implementation plan most leaders struggle with. We developed a simple implementation plan template to help you implement your strategy. In this strategy implementation guide, we introduce the strategy implementation template and explain each of the implementation plan steps in more detail. (company canvas)

Goal Setting Template: A goal setting template is a useful little tool to manage your goals. In this guide, we explain how to use the goal setting template. This goal setting template is basically a worksheet that covers 3 crucial areas: (1) The goal setting part and follow up of goals, (2) The habits lever, and (3) Change management

Change Management Template: A change management plan is an essential component of any strategy execution framework. Change management is often a big word in organization. But when you take a closer look, most leaders struggle to realize real change. We developed a series of simple templates to facilitate your strategy implementation process. In this guide, we zoom in on the Change Management Plan template component. You can download the complete set of change management templates when you scroll down this page (pop-up). It covers bad guys like The Pygmalion Effect.