“Without hard work, a great strategy remains a dream.
Without a great strategy, hard work becomes a nightmare.” ~ James Clear
As we head into a new year, strategic planning and goal setting come to the fore within most organisations large and small. Yet it is vital to recognise the big difference between the production of a strategy and the activation of a strategy.
In this blog, we outline the importance of strategy activation, noting that the key to success is in anchoring behaviour change to key business outcomes by asking these two questions:
- What business outcomes do leaders impact with their strategy?
- What behavioural capabilities are needed to deliver this impact?
Ensuring High Performance
Once the strategy is produced then comes the hard work of strategy activation. This is notoriously difficult and typically not undertaken well within companies or by leadership teams. 
Highly experienced leadership teams benefit from linking the strategy they produce directly to the leadership behaviours that drive high performance across the whole organisation.
It is important to note that high performance is not simply about what is achieved (the outcomes) it’s also about how these results are achieved – and that’s all about behaviours!
Anchoring Behaviour Change to Strategy Activation
The only way a strategy can be activated is through people and their behaviours. This requires accountability, discipline and a focus on the habits each person brings to the way they work.
When strategy is integrated into every individual role within the team, with full visibility at every step and with people engaged in the whole approach then it is successfully activated. Without engagement and commitment to strategy activation, it will not work.
Our Strategy Activation Approach
This is the approach we commit to using when undertaking strategy activation with clients:
Content
Content is informed by the strategy and an understanding of the right leadership capabilities and behaviours required to activate it on a timely basis.
Context
It’s important to cascade strategy activation using purpose-filled conversations where each person creates their own context for change in their day-to-day work. This creates an intrinsic motivation for behaviour change and a belief that their efforts make an impact.
Action
Bringing a focus on habits is where change is enabled. Guiding people to take action to replace old habits with new ones and finding ways of embedding them into daily activity is done through intentional conversations, support, and empowerment.
Our habit building platform provides nudge support to integrate behaviour change into every person’s work.
Insights
The habit building platform provides real-time status of outcomes, providing current snapshots to leaders and enabling the production of regular reports that tell the story of what is happening within the company. You’ll better understand which behaviours are having the greatest impact on key business outcomes responsible for strategy activation.
Doing it Differently This Year
We encourage leaders to think beyond the production of their strategy to its implementation. By integrating strategy activation into the operating rhythm of the company and ensuring people are empowered and supported to make the changes required, real business outcomes will result.
Give us a call and we can engage in a conversation to explore what you can do differently or read more here!
