When we think about agile strategy, let us remember that there are at least six “tracks” or domains of which you must have visibility to progress, not necessarily in a linear way, these are 1) strategy formulation of which we have already spoken in our previous capsule, 2) agile and adaptive progress system, 3) rapid and continuous alignment, 4) agile and adaptive execution, 5) inspection and adaptation to the strategy and 6) alignment of culture and leadership to the company. Today we will address the topic “agile and adaptive progress system”.

When implementing the strategy, organizations must “monitor performance and risk”, therefore it is relevant to have an effective system that allows observing progress and increasing the vision of this system through its adaptability and synchronization in execution.

Exploiting opportunities and mitigating risks means generating the capabilities to change positions quickly, capturing, interpreting and acting based on data and insights, focusing in real time as quickly as possible, although strategy and operation are different things, this is where we require alignment, through transparency and visibility before executing: co-creating objectives, indicators, as well as identifying impact initiatives and their adequate funding for their launch are basic elements to increase the probability of success in the effective adaptability of our company to the market, for the benefit of customers.

Many organizations are obsessed with measurement, the recommendation is to invest time and money in developing people who work with measurements, in the development of the practice and basic concepts of the underlying domains such as: data science, analytics, customer and user experience etc., this will create an internal strength to effectively leverage targeted results.

We must ensure that each strategic initiative, is adequately characterized, has a start and end date, is a unique and repeatable effort, is important enough to require sponsorship from a member of the senior leadership team, even when we are starting a transformation the strategic initiative is a pilot initiative, what we must understand is that they are not pilot at all, since the commitment is established at the highest level, despite being declared as a business hypothesis, the expectation is high, this also requires a high degree of commitment in its execution.

It is important to develop objective statements, it is advisable to write a statement for each objective within the financial and client perspectives, focusing on the strategic result we seek, let’s add a second paragraph of how the desired result will be achieved, as well as the strategic risks for each strategic objective.

It is important to explicitly establish the preferences of how we want to carry out the objectives, how we will impact the internal culture, so through brainstorming we co-create the positive behaviors that could result from it, to establish how we can feed back the positives and mitigate the negatives, these can be in line with the values ​​of the company.

We must be sure to have the financial resources and human capital to start, strategic initiatives should be connected to internal processes, to learning and growth perspectives (to what is done in the company, which generates financial results and for the client).

Remember that a strategic initiative is determined by the positive impact and customer coverage, which will be proportional to the profits generated.

Ideally, the strategic initiatives should impact more than one strategic objective, it is necessary to take care that the company or corporate does not focus on one-to-one link with the strategic objectives, which demonstrate centrality in silos, increase in declared dependencies, low collaboration and suboptimal returns, Russell Ackoff described this referring to the impact of the improvement in the work: “the improvement of the interactions is better, than the improvement of a separate area”, which means that the leverage of the results is achieved through collaboration, where an initiative can impact a set of strategic objectives.

This domain of strategic agility is related to the establishment of the vision and clear characterization of the portfolio and its strategic initiatives, the definition of initial metrics that represent progress in the results and the establishment of events and mechanisms that allow carrying out the inspection and adaptation of the plans at the financial, operational level, mainly, with the objective of responding effectively to the changing priorities between each of the cycles.

Thank you very much for your reading, in the next installment we will develop the domain “rapid and continuous alignment of the strategy”.

Miguel Ángel Martínez Hernández, March 10, 2021.

References:

1. Ismail, I., Palao, F., y Michelle, L. (2019). Transformación Exponencial. México D.F.: Bubok Publishing SL.
2. Lyngso, S. (2014). Agile strategy management: Techniques for continuous alignment and improvement. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
3. Fernando, R. (2019). Agile strategy: How to create a strategy ready for anything. Harlow, England: Pearson.
4. Lambert, D. (2020). Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution: Design, Architect, Prioritize, and Deliver your Corporate Future Successfully. CA: Independently published.
5. Wiraeus, D., y Creelman, J. (2019). Agile strategy management in the digital age: How dynamic balanced scorecards transform decision making, speed and effectiveness. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
6. Porter, D. T., y Porter, M. E. (2015). Estrategia competitiva: Técnicas para el análisis de los sectores industriales y de la competencia. México D.F.: Grupo Editorial Patria.