Successful Strategy = Accurate Market Analysis + Change Management
Cross-functional support for strategy is essential to its success.
Accurate analysis of market and company data is not enough for a strategy to be successful.
The contribution and buy-in of the teams and experts who will deliver on and capture the market opportunity is equally important.
Change management starts at the same time with the development of the strategy and is a part of it.
Successful strategy development and implementation depend not only on reading and interpreting a market opportunity correctly, but also on changing the organization to invest in and capture the opportunity.
This is what makes strategic initiatives complex: they require not only data and insight about the market and analytical work, but also the involvement and contribution of those parts of the company who can best build the necessary capabilities, assets and products to serve the market opportunity.
And this is why building a cross-functional team to generate and decide on the optimal strategy is essential.
The involvement of various experts and company leaders in strategy development is important not just because of their ability to deliver against the finalized strategy, but also to surface and highlight the company’s existing strengths and assets that can be leveraged to capture the market opportunity.
Best practices to get the cross-functional support and buy-in you need:
Solve a business or operational problem for the individual teams. A strategy doesn’t just impact the company’s top-line goals, metrics and structure, but also individual teams and stakeholders. A good strategy improves the way multiple teams work together and how individual functions perform in the organization. While it may not be apparent right from the start what problem the strategy development process will improve for the individual teams, pay attention to it and it will become obvious.
Map out clearly the schedule and contribution needed from each stakeholder / team. Most people in the organization have likely not had a lot of experience building strategy and those people who have, have likely been exposed to various types of strategic processes. It’s important to map out at the beginning of the engagement how much time and work you will need from each of the teams and stakeholders, and at which point of the process they will be needed. This will make getting support faster and easier.
Build consensus about key concepts and language. In fast-moving industries like tech there are always new concepts that are being invented or whose meaning changes. That means that different people will have a different understanding of what a certain concept or tech means. And, when you are making investment decisions for a company, words matter a lot. So take the time and make sure you get the entire team on the same page about the definition of the key concepts and technology pieces that will be under discussion.
Change management is the less tangible and less obvious work that is needed to make a strategy will have the desired impact in an organization, but it’s as important as the analytical work. It must be planned out and considered from the beginning of the strategy development and kept on the schedule and Action Items list through-out the process.