Strategy Implementation Professional Certification Training Bundle

This module addresses understanding the leader's role in strategy implementation. Leaders don't implement. A leader's role in strategy implementation is to drive and champion it. The employees are responsible for the implementation by taking the right actions each day. Leaders need to stay engaged throughout the implementation, constantly be inspiring, coaching their employees, and overseeing and tracking the implementation.

The module learning objectives are:

• Why and how to avoid repeating past implementation mistakes
• Understand the role of the leader in implementation
• The importance of the leadership sharing consistent message
• Discovering best practices for leading employees
  

Crafting: Leaders habitually repeat mistakes from previous implementations. The challenge is to learn from past mistakes while adopting best practices for the new implementation.

• Avoid past mistakes
• Learn from failure
• Provide the skills to implement
• Understand why the strategy implementation failure rate is so high
  

Embedding: Leaders need to share a consistent message across the organization while driving, coaching, and championing the implementation.

• Know how and when to step back as a leader to implement
• Learn implementation tools and tactics
• Recognize how to overcome resistance to implementation
• Blend Top down and bottom up approaches
• Reflect and review on progress and learnings
  

Executing: Leaders need to stay true to the strategy while also managing the business. This requires an ambidextrous leadership style.

• Leadership engagement as a discipline
• Make your strategy more relevant
• Uncommon practices in implementation
• Organizational ambidexterity
  

Sustaining: As the organization is celebrating the successful implementation, leaders are responsible for already starting to ask, "what next?".

• Adaptive and proactive leadership
• Scenario planning is a tool for strategic thinking
• Redefine leadership for the digital age

This module addresses why your business model needs to change to support strategy implementation. Adopting a new strategy translates to changing the current business model. Sometimes the changes are minor, and at other times they require a whole business model transformation, e.g. when adopting digitalization. But the business model needs to change to support the implementation.

The module learning objectives are:

• Understand why and how business models needs to change
• Discover the importance of thinking strategically in implementation
• Be aware of changing technologies
• Discover how to digitalize the business
• Discover how to execute projects with excellence
• Discover how to sustain engagement and resources
  

Crafting: By default, a new strategy translates to changing the way the organization operates. This means a new business model to support and enable employees.

• What is a Business Model?
• Strategic thinking as you implement
• How you can think more strategically?
• Why business models need to keep changing
  

Embedding: Synergising the way employees work to drive the implementation takes focus and energy within the organization. Leaders need to remain observant of both external and internal trends and the best methodology for transforming the business.

• Design A successful transformation
• Adopt a “To Stop List”
• Digital strategic execution versus traditional execution
• Impact of robotics and artificial intelligence
• Escaping legacy systems and culture
  

Executing: At this stage the new strategy starts to be imbued into the organization and is becoming the new norm. However, the business model needs to remain fluid.

• A project driven organization
• The “Project Canvas”
• Selling projects instead of products
  

Sustaining: This is almost a contradiction because as the organization is sustaining the implementation success, the leaders need to already be preparing the next strategy and organizations transformation.

• The future of business
• Reinventing business models

This module addresses why culture drives your implementation. Culture drives the way an organization implement its strategy. Two organizations can have the same strategy but how they implement will always be different as every organization culture is different. Culture no longer eats strategy for breakfast because of the speed we are working today. Strategy now drives the culture in many organizations that drives the way they implement.

The module learning objectives are:

• How culture drives strategy
• How to ensure culture is an implementation enabler
• How to develop a culture of accountability
• Why a culture of accountability is critical for implementation?
• Understand why and how culture life cycles are changing
  

Crafting: Culture is important in the implementation of strategies because it drives the way an organization implements. Two organizations can have the same strategy but how they implement it is driven by their culture. And as every organization culture is different it means every implementation is unique.

• What is Corporate Culture?
• Importance of Culture In Implementation
• Leaders Role in Culture
  

Embedding: Understand how to embed the culture to support implementation.

• Culture drives the way leaders implement strategy
• Changing an organization’s culture
• Align culture implementation
  

Executing: Culture is the hardest of the seven modules to change as culture can be defined as, "the way you do everything." Therefore, if you need to change the culture you are changing the way you do everything.

• Develop a culture of accountability
• The hard side of implementation
  

Sustaining: Culture life cycles are becoming shorter and as a result the leaders need to maintain an open mind to their own organization's culture. Ironically, they need to sustain the culture while also maintaining fluidity to change it!

• Continuously evolve the company culture
• Keep culture adaptable, nimble, transparent
• Culture for implementing strategy in a digital world

This module addresses how to manage and communicate to different stakeholders. The initial challenge is to introduce the new strategy to the whole organization and in this module, you are introduced to how this can be effectively done by teasing internal stakeholders and having leaders recognize that the launch is only 15% of the overall implementation communication goals. Too frequently in stakeholder management, communication around the implementation, dissipate after the first six months. A heavy emphasis in this module is placed on nurturing the communications throughout the whole implementation journey.

The module learning objectives are:

• Mistakes to avoid when communicating a new strategy
• A tool for mapping and prioritizing stakeholders
• Why and how to brand your strategy message
• Identifying key roles and responsibilities
• Ensure the communication is nurtured throughout the whole journey
  

Crafting: Leaders are responsible for setting their employees up for success by starting to identify what new skills and information employees require. They need to identify the most effective way to prepare the different stakeholders and to communicate key messages.

• Plan Strategy Launch
• Teaser campaign
• Create a burning platform
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Stakeholder Analysis Matrix
  

Embedding: Leader's responsibilities now shift to ensuring that different stakeholders have the right information, skills and understanding to implement. Too many implementations fail at this stage because leaders don't invest the time to prepare their employees. This section discusses communication and leverages more videos as they are one of the most popular forms of communication.

• Biggest Mistake: Strategy First, Urgency Second
• The importance of communication
• Cascade strategy messages and expectations to Stakeholders
• Effective Strategy Communication
  

Executing: Executing stakeholder management focuses on sustaining the communication while ensuring communication transparency and engaging employees.

• Over Communicate to Stakeholders providing transparency
• Creating and Sustaining Momentum
  

Sustaining: Make stakeholder management an active part of every leader’s communications and strategy implementation.

• Encouraging leaders to communicate

This module addresses how to ensure employees are inspired to participate in the implementation. Which is not an easy challenge as the level of employees who are disengaged in their work is surprisingly high in many countries and industries. Asking employees to adopt a new strategy translates to asking them to do "more work". Why? Initially they must keep working the old way while adopting the new way. The challenge is for leaders to inspire, engage and excite their people in the implementation. When employees are committed to the implementation, they will start to take the right actions that then gains momentum and early success. We need lots of people, taking small actions to create implementation. It's also important to prepare employees with the right implementation attitude, knowledge and skills.

The module learning objectives are:

• How to identify new skills requirements
• The value of highly engaged employees
• The four different ways employees respond to implementation, as not everyone resists change
• Middle manager’s role as lynchpin
• How to align and track resources
• How to sustain engagement and resources
  

Crafting: Only 5% of employees (Bridges research) can tell you their own organization strategy. One of the first challenges is to make sure everyone in the organization knows why it is changing, understand what the new strategy is about and identify the impact on themselves. Embedding: The challenge is to identify the new skills employees require to implement the strategy and to ensure they are engaged.

• Allocate Resources
• Develop and engage employees
• Start with why - how great leaders inspire action
• Other tactics for inspiring employees to take the right actions
  

Executing: As momentum builds among employees across the organization, leaders focus to now setting everyone up for success with the resources and recognition that reinforces the right actions. Train the rest of organization.

• Continually Reward and Recognize
• Align and track Resources
• External Partners Collaboration
  

Sustaining: Strategy continuous to evolve and leaders need to ensure employees do so as well by continuously adopting new skills and capabilities.

• Identify shifts in Resource requirements
• Continuous engagement across Organization
• Self-Directed Employees

This module addresses the importance of tracking and reviewing implementation. Taking corrective action along the way is critical for success. But how do you know where you are and what action to take if you are not diligently tracking your performance, throughout the whole implementation journey. Too many leaders start off with the right intentions but somewhere between thought and actions they lose focus and commitment. Tracking performance is an essential discipline and this module focuses on ensuring the organizations has the right measures in place to manage the implementation and the discipline to constantly review the organization performance.

The module learning objectives are:

• The importance of conducting frequent reviews to keep the implementation on track
• Why tracking performance is critical
• How to identify the right measures to track the implementation
• How to use measures to review and manage the business, based on the “Balanced Scorecard”
• How measures drive the right actions
• How to structure a review
• Best practices for hosting effective reviews
  

Crafting: As the organizations starts to implement, its essential for leaders from the start to have in place the right measures to track progress and start to instill the discipline of constantly reviewing performance.

• Balanced Scorecard
• Strategy Map
• Strategic objectives
  

Embedding: Ensure your organization has the discipline to track the implementation and take corrective action as required, while cascading the strategy.

• Cascade your strategy
• Discipline of using reviews
• Divisional and departmental scorecards
• Identify right measures
  

Executing: Make sure the implementation is reviewed as required and challenge the original strategy assumptions.

• Establish regular performance reviews
• Best practices for using measures to manage the business
  

Sustaining: Review the strategy to ensure its still fully adding value.

• Ensure reviews become part of the organization culture
  

Challenge assumptions made in original strategy