Is your strategy impactful?

Your strategy can be said to be impactful if it can be successful in achieving its overall objectives, and if it can make incremental impact as the strategic plan progresses. To do this, your strategic targets need to guide and drive strategic change by being:

• Actionable AND
• Measurable AND
• Purposeful.

Discover below:

• Key advice and actions to improve the impact of your strategy.
• Questions to ask to prompt deeper conversations on the impact of your strategy across your organisation.
• Strategy models relating to impact.
• Strategy workshops.
• Links to our full range of resources, including ‘The Strategy Manual’, our Strategy Glossary and links to articles and posts by Mike Baxter.
• We also offer consultancy and advice on all aspects of strategy.

Key advice and actions

Your strategy will be impactful if the targets for all your strategic goals are all actionable, measurable and purposeful.

1. Key Performance Indicators

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a critical measure of progress towards an intended outcome. A Strategic Key Performance Indicator is a critical measure of progress towards the change specified in a strategy.

Key performance indicators comprise three parts: a target, a date and a measure of progress at a given point in time towards that target. They are either lagging indicators (measures of impact, measures of output, measures of the consequences of actions) or leading indicators (measures of input, measures of action or their immediate consequences).

Strategic KPIs serve two distinct purposes:

1. Success-defining KPIs are ultimate indicators of strategy success. They enable you to decide if strategy success has been achieved and, if not, whether it is still wise to persist in pursuing it.
2. Critical-to-success KPIs track the progress of goals upon which the success of the strategy depends. They enable you to decide whether plans need to be adjusted to improve outcomes, or whether a different way of achieving the same outcome needs to be found.

The AMP Model of Good KPIs proposes that good strategic key performance indicators are actionable, measurable and purposeful:

1. Actionable – For KPIs to be actionable, they need to be owned, they need to be visible to their owner and the owner must be able to influence their outcome. Goal owners must not simply be passive observers of the KPI moving towards or away from its target.
2. Measurable – KPIs must be sufficiently precise, accurate and timely to be fit for purpose.
3. Purposeful – KPIs must contribute to strategic success.

2. Defining impact

For a strategy to be impactful, it must bring about change. The whole purpose of strategy is to seek commitment across the organisation to a future that is different from the one you would arrive at by continuing on your current course. This change of direction is a defining feature of strategy. If you don’t seek change, you don’t need a strategy. Being clear about the change you seek to bring about is the first hallmark of a good strategy.

For a strategy to be impactful it must be a compelling vision of the future. Envisioning the future is hard. Structured and systematic processes like the Futures Cone make it just that little bit less hard by illustrating the variety of possible futures that emanate from the current moment in time.

Let’s talk about… impactful strategy

Use these questions to prompt deeper conversations* on impactful strategy and strategy measurement across your organisation:

• How fit for purpose has your measurement of strategy been in the past?  What worked well?  What worked badly?
• How important do you, as an organisation, think strategy measurement is, and as a result how much effort should go into doing it thoroughly?
• Which aspects of strategy are you likely to struggle most to measure? What could you do to make these aspects of measurement more effective?
• How does your organisational culture respond to targets?  Are they a force for good?  Are they set diligently?  Once set, are they respected?  Do they drive strategy forward in a positive way?

*Download a pdf with some helpful rules (suggested by Ed Morrison and colleagues in their book Strategic Doing) to ensure successful conversations about strategy.

Want to know more?

Discover below the strategy models and workshops that can improve the impact of your strategy, or see our full range of resources, including ‘The Strategy Manual‘, our Strategy Glossary and links to articles and posts by Mike Baxter.

We also offer consultancy and advice on all aspects of strategy – find out more about how we work.

Our strategy workshops and models are colour-coded  under the following themes:

Strategy models to ensure your strategy is impactful:

Strategy workshops to ensure your strategy is impactful:

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