Make it Happen with Strategic Alignment, and with Clear Strategies and Tactics

Our theme this month is about setting and reviewing your strategic management plan.  Now is the time to set and review your vision & mission and goals & objectives so that they are in place and fully communicated throughout the organization at the start of the New Year. 

In previous articles we have defined key terms, explained the important role of clear and honest statements of vision and mission, and clarified the difference between goals and objectives.  Now let’s move on to strategies and tactics, as well as how all of these should align in your business, department, or organization.

Fulfill Objectives with Strategies and Tactics

Strategies are the general methods that will help you achieve objectives and realize goals. Returning to an earlier example, if a stated objective is to release two new products this year, how is that going to happen?  Do you have the right personnel, equipment, and knowledge?  If not, then what are you doing to put them in place?  If you do, then in what general ways will you employ them?

For example, is it best to have new products that improve on existing ones, or new products that reach into untapped markets and create new product lines?  Your goals or objectives may not consider or contain such important information.  Your strategy, however, should provide it.

Tactics provide even more specific information.  What are the key activities that need to take place in order to reach your two product objective?  Product research?  Design reviews?  Prototype building and testing?  With tactics you are deploying your resources in very specific ways with very specific activities that will lead to reaching goals and objectives.

Balanced and Aligned Management

Goal-objective setting, and use of strategies and tactics, may not help your organization if they don’t align properly to achieve desired results.  First, goals-objectives-strategies-tactics should be used to fulfill the overarching vision-mission statements.  But typically other things need to be happening in the organization as well for it to be successful.

Going back to our example vision statement making a commitment to excellent customer service, customer service may be the most important thing in your organization, but few businesses can survive thinking only about customer service.  So while the first set of goals should ensure the organization’s vision is fulfilled, additional goals and objectives should focus on other facets of your business that are important for success.

At Bizmanualz, we like the balanced scorecard model set forth by Kaplan & Norton.  Here, four key areas are identified that every business must be concerned with in order to be successful:  Financial – Customer – Leaning & Growth – Internal Processes.  So even if customer service is the most important activity, any company proactively working toward success should be setting goals in all four areas.

Communicate Your Goals and Objectives

The next step is to propagate goals-objectives down into the organization, with each department or segment creating goals and objectives that align with or support over-arching organizational goals-objectives.  Then, functional groups create even more specific objectives to support department goals-objectives.

In the “new product” example, the design/development department would create goals-objectives to support the “two new products each year,” and various groups in the department could create goals and objectives dealing with the number of prototypes built, the number of design reviews held, or number of tests conducted;whatever goals-objectives lead directly to reaching the two new products objective.

True alignment is achieved when your goals & objectives and strategies & tactics reach far down in the organization, yet support the effort to fulfill organizational goals.

There is still time in 2007 to develop and communicate vision & mission, goals & objectives, and strategies & tactics, and have departments create their own aligning set.  It can be an important ingredient to having a successful 2008. Good luck!

For a deeper understanding of process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class. If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

To learn more about using effective auditing techniques to improve your organization, attend the next Internal Auditor or Lead Auditor Training Class.

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Posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 under Strategic Process Improvement

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Make it Happen with Strategic Alignment, and with Clear Strategies and Tactics.

This and more articles like this can be found at www.bizmanualz.com. This article may be reprinted freely as long as this resource box is left intact.