The 5 Qualities of Disciplined Strategic Governance

The 5 qualities of disciplined strategic governance:

Clarity of Communication

If people can’t clearly understand the path forward, they will make their own decisions on how best to proceed in business; not all of those decisions will be the right ones. Clearly telling the story of strategy, that engages and animates people into action, provides a strong sense of purpose and encourages the best decision making.

Alignment of Outputs

The best way to complete a large complex task is to break it into smaller tasks. Take the vision and mission of a large organization; a classic strategic approach encourages the decomposition of activities to lower levels, more granular detail and to short periods of time. However it is of primary importance that all strategic activity branches from a single point, if precious resource is being invested in activity that does not align with vision and mission, then why are we doing it?

Linkage of Outcomes

Aligning the organization and clearly describing the output of it’s workforce is a major step forward, but this alone does not represent the entire picture of execution performance. Fundamental to understanding if those actions have made any impact are your quantified outcomes (metrics / measures / KPIs). Linking and mapping outcomes to the appropriate outputs allows the entire organization to view the key dimensions of execution performance.

Consideration of Risks

Risks are another dimension required to assess the quality of execution. Complementing both structured outcomes (metrics) and subjective output (delivery) requires considering the impact of failures anywhere in the process, internal or external. Linking your key strategic initiatives to risks must be done in order to mitigate these failures before they occur, and they should be formulated and reviewed on a regular basis.

Strengthening Collaboration

Collaboration matters – whether it be through strategic partnerships to bring about greater brand name recognition, or internal collaboration to promote new ideas. And while studies show 39 percent of employees worldwide say people in their organization don’t collaborate enough, what is equally important is how they collaborate. Collaboration should not be just communicating ideas, but about communicating and collaborating in a way to make old ideas new and innovative.