GA 508 | Adopting a Strategy Execution Framework with Karen Friedenberg

Hopefully you have that kind of process and that kind of relationship with your leader. So we can talk about that as well. But you can start from that bottom up. Like, do I understand the strategy? Like, what is my part in this whole. What's my piece of the whole puzzle? Right? What's my part that's making us move forward?

Today I'm excited to welcome Karen Friedenberg back to the show. Now, Karen was actually on, I guess about three years ago. I didn't realize it had been that long. But today Karen and I dived all into the whole of sort of strategic planning. So obviously this time of year is lots of, lots of things going on, typically with companies looking at, you know, how did the 2023 go? What are we looking forward to 2024? And so lots of good stuff in here. Karen lays out a sort of a framework that she likes and it's very similar to, you know, if you might be familiar with ocean planning or something like that. A lot of similarities. So some lot of good stuff in there. Some. A lot of good tips I think you're going to benefit from. Also, if you do need some help with strategic planning, we've got a lot of good content on Gemba Academy, if I can give a really subtle plug. So we've got a whole series of videos on Hoshin Kanray or ocean planning, and we even have a course dedicated to the X Matrix. Now, I personally love the X Matrix and that's what we use here at Gamba Academy ourselves for our own strategic planning. So we've got level one, level two, level three, and in that course we walk through in great detail how to navigate that. So that one Mary up with our Hoshin planning course is going to really get you on the way to having a strong strategic plan. So we'll get Jessica to link those up and you can watch some of those videos, the first video, free of charge, if you're not a subscriber. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Karen, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Ron.

Yeah, thanks for coming on so well. I'm excited for today's conversation. It's. I think it's going to be a really appropriate topic given the sort of the time of year and all that that we're in. But before then, Karen, you know the drill. We like to get things going with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you have?

Yeah, I have sort of a traditional one and a non traditional, if that's okay. Ron, yeah. The first traditional I have is begin with the end in mind, Stephen Covey. So I thought that was appropriate. We'll be talking about, you know, what this is about and as we're looking out and having a vision, having an end place of where you want to go and how important that is and not just starting to execute without having that end in mind. And then I have one of my own actually, if you don't mind. If you don't have the map to where you're going, you'll be steering a boat without a compass. So not only about having the end in mind where you're going, but do you have the plan to get there? Are you measuring along the way? Are you making sure you're still, are you course correcting along the way. So I tend to use a lot of analogy around journeys and probably come back to that again.

Yeah. Love it, love it. All right, well, Karen, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you got into all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I have over a 20 year career working both within industry as well as within consulting. I started out at Anderson Arthur Andersen business consulting. I had my own, I've had my own consulting firm now for many years. But I also worked with an industry both at Campbell Soup. That's where I started my lean Six Sigma journey. Became a green belt there. And as well as I've worked in some smaller organizations building out different departments, building out operational effectiveness excellence types of departments as well as strategic PMOs. So really have a career in strategy to execution, leveraging a lot of the lean tools. I love to use them not only in my business but in my everyday. I always look for it. So when we last talked, I think it was actually about three years ago, Ron. I was at isims and as I said there, I built out our business optimization and strategic pmo. Really a transformational pmo. And over the past six to nine months I've pivoted back into consulting again. I am the founder of Performance Improvement Consulting. So I have a consulting firm and we're focusing on leading and facilitating companies from strategy to execution really to improve their business performance. So everything from strategic planning and strategy articulation to the process improvement executing on the strategy. So project and program management and organizational change management. So we take you through full lifecycle and wherever you need us. We can plug and play in those areas where you may have gaps and need to improve your business performance.

Got it, Got it. All right. Well, so as you alluded to, strategy execution is going to be sort of what we, we dive into today. And so in preparing for this, you and I were sort of going back and forth and I understand that you've got a strategy execution framework. So I'm wondering if you could just walk us through, you know, high level, what is the framework and you know, how did you come up with it?

Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, so as we were, as I was coming in and really thinking about companies and where they struggle, we put together this framework. It is circular, so kind of thinking continuous improvement. Always think about coming back to the beginning at the end. So really companies ask like, where do I even start and when I come into a company, where do I start when I'm starting to consult and advise a company? So that's what the strategy execution framework is to say. Like, okay, are you taking the steps and maybe where do you have some gaps? Where do you need to shore up your capabilities along so that you're executing flawlessly? Right. And your strategy are all going in the same direction. So that's really what the strategy, the execution framework is. And I said it's like four major steps and I can walk you through that.

Yeah, yeah, let's go go through them.

That sounds great. So really starting at that like 12 o' clock split, starting at the top, number one is strategy articulation. Right. So the first piece of this is, do you have a strategy? Most companies do. When I come in, I look to it, look to see what it is. Mission, vision, values and purpose. That's usually typically companies have that. Right? It's usually on their website and companies have that. So that's the first step and that's that North Star. So always making sure that we're tethering to that North Star about what the company's mission, vision and values are and that purpose. But really the next step is getting into the next level of detail. So we'll ask and start to talk to a company about, okay, do you have a strategic plan? Do you have strategic imperatives and objectives? Right, so that could be some typical ones you typically see out there are, you know, may include increasing their revenues, improving profitability or reducing costs, improving customer service or experience, employee experience, innovation. So what are those? Do we have those determined and have they started to really break those down into the next level of detail? So a lot of times we'll get into, you may have that as high level, but start to not get into the what you want to do and maybe the measurement of what that is, but also the how really getting into, how do you go about executing on that strategy or what is the components of the strategy. So for example, like if we were to say revenue, we could come and say, yeah, I want to increase my revenues by 20% or I want to get to a certain dollar revenue. Well, how are you going to get there? Is it by penetrating your existing customers with more products? Is it by finding new customers? Is it through expansion? Is it through expansion, whether that be within your own company, new markets or international expansion, new products, bringing new products to market, bringing new products to market. And that starts to tell you by putting those pictures together where you need to focus on how you prioritize. And really that's what we'll look for in that strategic plan is those high level strategic imperatives, the objectives, the initiatives and the metrics. And those are usually the components that we'll look for to lead us to see if that strategic plan is sound or if we need to kind of short that up a little bit.

And that's the three o', clock, right?

Yeah. So as we're going through, if you're kind of visualing as. Right, the first part of it is that number one is the strategy out there. And as we're going through and we talk about organizational alignment, really now like going into like one o' clock and two up to three o' clock is, is that written down? Right? How is that communicated and are we aligned on it? So the next key step is are we truly aligned as a leadership team on that strategy? And I think that is so important. And the details are the devil's in the details there. Right? So as we start to think about, okay, yeah, everybody can agree to we want to increase revenue or everybody can kind of agree to, we want to reduce costs. But it's the how, where you get into it and then the translation of that into what might be your budgets or your annual operating plan. So do we, are we going to actually put investment behind that? And what are those initiatives that we need to be able to do? Where the investments we're going to make are we budgeted for it, are the resources allocated to making those things happen? And really that step before you move on, you move on to the next step, is making sure that your leadership is aligned. And one of the ways and that we prioritize. So those strategic initiatives are really truly large, cross functional types of projects that companies work on. There shouldn't be too many of them. If you have too many, I'm like, then you have too many priorities. So prioritization is so key. And what you're not doing is just as important as what you are doing. One of the ways that I've worked with executive leadership teams is laying out those key strategic initiatives. I say no more than 10, maybe even less than that, and force ranking them, really saying which one is your first, most important, which one is your second, third and down the line. And what that really does is when we have to make trade offs or when you have to make decisions, it makes those decisions easier because you're going to put your resources, your money, your time are going to go faster potentially of the things that are maybe your top five priorities versus maybe your five through 10. So that's one of the ways, that's one of the tactics I use. And so that alignment, that organizational alignment first at the leadership level is the next piece that needs to happen.

Got it, Got it.

Once the leaders are aligned, then we need to make sure we're communicating that to the whole organization. So how is that then getting communicated and translated into the objectives for the rest of the organization? So Ron, as we said, we're kind of sitting here. Whether you're listening to this, it's the end of 2023 or going into 2024. Many of you are going through that review of 2023, how you did and your performance. And then we'll be developing your next year's objectives. So really many companies do this in different ways, right? And how they structure it. You can pick one. So a lot of companies just have sort of your traditional management business objectives or objectives. Some of them use a framework called the okr which is objectives, key performance indicators and results you may use. Some of you if you're lean. I haven't really seen it in action as Hoshin Planning or Hoshin Connery different ways. My last company we did what was called a plan on a page. So everybody had their objectives aligned to those strategic initiatives, imperatives or strategic objectives. And so it starts to translate at the highest level again those objectives into initiatives at a high level and then starts to say, okay, how do I as an individual contributor, how am I making sure that we're moving forward as a company towards a strategy? Whether it's what I do every day or whether it is a project I'm working on, how can I contribute to moving the company forward towards our strategic objectives? I think that that's really important. So you have that organizational alignment and that's really the next step.

Okay, got it. Organizational alignment. So our leaders are Aligned. Now, we've communicated that and aligned that throughout the organization. So what's next?

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We'Ve communicated that and aligned that throughout the organization. So what's next?

Yeah, so it's determining what those initiatives. We've determined what those initiatives are at that point. We've determined what initiatives are and we're getting more into the operational alignment. So really now translating that into the operations. And this is where I think lean can really come in. And that's where I use this a lot. So, for example, sometimes the strategic objective might be improve customer service. Right. They may know they have a problem with delivering the product on time. This is where I know we had our last time we spoke, Ron, on process improvement. And I know some of those methodologies can really come into play because we may not know why. Why are we not delivering our product on time? But again, it's tied to that key strategic objective of customer experience. We know what the problem is. We're not delivering our product on time. And now we can start to say, okay, our project, our initiative. And we can utilize some of the lean tools to dig into the problem of delivering our product on time. So that's where like the operational alignment comes in. And again, process improvement is a key tool. I believe in that one.

Okay, does that sort of complete the framework or do you have more?

I got more. So that's number two. So number one was strategy articulation.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Number two is operational alignment. We're sort of at the 6 o' clock now. We're sort of at the six o' clock around the dial. And now we move into. So once you have your initiatives, you know you're aligned. We have ownership. Okay, so I didn't talk about that piece. Ownership is key. So do we have the owners and the measures? So we know that these are the projects, who's responsible for them, who's sponsoring them and how we're going to measure that we're improving and going in the right direction and then it's time to Execute. Then it's time to say, all right, we've got them, and it's time to execute. And that's about executing with excellence. So we'll look into what kind of structures a company has. Do you have a. Do you have a pmo? Do you have a project management office or a program management office? Do you. Maybe you're a smaller company and a lot of the tech companies have a chief of staff. Some companies don't have that. Some companies are so small that they don't have that type of structure. But you maybe have the way. So you have to think about how are you, number one, going to execute on the projects at the lowest level, making sure you have the structures in place to execute on time, on budget, making sure those projects are successful. And then how are you going to track that those strategic initiatives are moving in the right direction, are being executed and being executed the way you want them to. So that can be done in different ways. I like to use a portfolio management type of approach, which might be, what are those strategic objectives? A little bit about them. And then using that red, amber, green, the rag rating to say, how are we doing on status? What might be some of the blockers that are occurring and having, again, that one sheet of paper that the executives can always look at and leadership as well as the whole organization. You know, we publish this. It's not just like for, you know, the small group of people, you know, that are in the C suite. This is really something that the whole organization should own and know about and be able to say, oh, I'd be interested in learning more about that initiative. Who could I go to? And they can just look on the piece of paper and say, oh, here's the owner of it, here's the project manager, or here's the sponsor and reach out and say, I have something to contribute for this initiative, or I'm doing this thing for this, you know, that could help you out. So I think, again, that communication is such an important part of this. So, you know, so that's what we'll kind of look at. What are the mechanisms that you have in place to be able to track that you're moving forward in the right direction? Right. That we're all rowing the boat in the same direction. If you kind of think, I have a visual of the crew and the skull, Right. Everybody rowing the boat in the same direction and that we haven't veered off.

Course and are we winning or are we losing?

Right.

Basic as that. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Okay.

So, you know, I Just look to see that you have some sort of a method. You can use more agile methods. Right. Looking at it. But there, there's lots of different ways to do it and just something in place to make sure that you are measuring it, you're monitoring and knowing that we're moving in the right direction to the end goals.

Yeah.

Okay, so that gets us, that's like the third piece that kind of gets you to the 9 o' clock and now the final stretch is to make it sustainable. Right. So this is where organizational change management comes in. And one of the first questions I have on that is what is your leadership's position on executing strategy? Do they really see it as part of their job? We know that from change management that sponsorship and leadership and the buy in is one of the most important things. So is leadership making the time for people to execute on the strategy? Is the leadership following up? Are they active and visible? So that's sort of some of those digging deeper into some of those types of questions to see that this is important and that we again have that mechanism to make this happen. The second part is do we have a way that how are we thinking about bringing our people along for the journey? And this is where organizational change management comes in. I know last time we talked, Ron, I talked about the pro Sci methodology, which is one that I tend to use, but I don't think it matters as long as you have something, something where you're communicating where we're going, that we know that we're getting people ready and that we're reinforcing that change. So really that sustainability coming back and making sure that again checking ourselves, that we have a way of checking ourselves and that we are sustaining the change. And then we talked about the measurement, right, the measurement piece not only for the strategy as well as for the individual initiatives. Are we looking at what's happening from a strategy perspective not only within our own organization, that we are like, we can't be so tunnel visioned into just our projects. But has anything changed in the market? Has something happened around us or in our company that could be something like macroeconomic, like a global pandemic or economic changes or a war or other things like that, but it could also be something within our company like a merger integration that might change a little bit of what we do or an organizational change or things of that nature. So having those mechanisms to continuously check is really important. Again, whether that be checking at the high level strategy, maybe on a quarterly basis and having some business reviews and seeing what's working. What's not? Do we need to change what might be changing in our, our organization and the broader world, or whether that be on a more frequent basis for your own individual initiatives? Right. I would assume that you're kind of checking in on those a little bit more clearly and your own individual objectives as well, that you're tracking towards them. So having those mechanisms the way to measure and any type of a program. Right. Or a methodology to check in on how we're doing. And that really gets us back. Because that gets you back to 12 o', clock, you know, Then do you need to pivot? Then do you need to pivot? Gets it back. Okay, it's a continuous loop is my end goal. Is my North Star still the same? Did I move it a little bit how I got there? Do I need to change that? A little bit of how I'm getting there? So that then allows those loops back to make those changes and pivots as needed.

Where do you. Or where are some potential failure modes that you've seen, like through this whole framework? Like, where have you seen it break down?

Yeah, well, I think really it's important to set up the stage right from the beginning. I think that alignment piece is extremely important. So when I talk to people who are executing kind of down in that number three of executing, one of the biggest issues they have is, well, we're not on the same page about this. I don't have the resources I need. I have blockers. Well, what's the reason why you have those? And probably because you weren't aligned to enough of a level of detail from the start. You might need to go back to that. Are we really aligned? Kind of come back. Are we truly, truly aligned? Because we'd be giving your resource. If we really believe this was priority, we will be giving our resources to it. We would be, you know, we would be making. We would be making it happen as an organization. So I think that's one that I see typically happen a lot and where the frustration a lot of times is especially like at the line level and those who are executing on projects and trying to make their pieces happen, that's the first one. And then I think thinking cross functionally is always important. So what I see sometimes happen is, okay, let's take that first example I gave of revenue generation or cost cutting. I might just go to the revenue generation, go to the chief revenue officer or the cost cutting, go to the chief operating officer. But we all know that we all need to be thinking about these things together. Cross functionally and where do you need the help? So thinking about the resources you need, what might be the implication to other departments, to other functions, Do I need to consult with legal or do I need to consult with Information Security or whatever it might be? That's an important piece too that we often overlook. And that's where I often see that people struggle. If it's something I can just control myself and do, it's easier to do. But when I need others help, that's when it's gets harder to accomplish.

Yeah. So interesting. You know, we're. So we don't always announce this but like we're actually recording this on December 12, 2023, so it's going to be released later. But you know, here at Gamba Academy we are actually big fans of, of, of the Hoshin framework. And so and we, we actually use the X Matrix, you know, method. There's a million methods. You can use a threes, just pieces of paper, however you want to do it. But the thing that I, that I've learned over the years in practicing in this is come to your point of that alignment, the importance of. And lean. We call it catch ball, you know. And so like if, if you're my manager, Karen, you say Ron, you know, here's an objective I'd like, I'd like you to, to look into, consider blah, blah, blah or whatever and you know, we go back and forth a little bit, we have a dialogue. Right. And until you and I are both mutually bought in now there might just be some times to where you were like, okay, so I know it's going to be hard, Ron, but that's what the organization, you know, and so you're my boss, right? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. But, but we do our best to get that, that sort of buy in back and forth. And I see that not happen more often than not where it's sort of just like thrown down to the, to the lower levels and then figure it out. Right. And I think that that's just a really crappy way of trying to lead. It's not leading, it's dictating even, you know. Yeah. So what do you think about that? On just on that sort of that. Whether you call it catch ball or whatever, it's sort of that back and forth conversation on alignment.

Absolutely. So I'm going to say if you are here and you're an individual contributor kind of listening in and you're thinking about your objectives and you're going to, hopefully you have that kind of process and that kind of relationship with your leader. So we can talk about that as well. But you can start from that bottom up. Like, do I understand a strategy? What is my part in this whole. What's my piece of the whole puzzle? Right. What's my part that's making us move forward? And if you can even show that you're thinking strategically, I think that's a great lesson and a great thing for those who are listening in. And if you're a leader, you should be connecting and saying this is why again, I go back to change management and understanding why this is important and why what you're doing, how that fits in. So a lot of times when you think especially cross functionally it might not be such to my benefit. If I'm doing this thing, I may not see the benefit, but the company sees the benefit. That's always harder. But we're only going to succeed if we succeed as a whole organization or a whole company. We won't have. The company won't be here or the organization won't be here. We have to do that. Understanding and really putting yourself in other people's shoes, seeing the whole big picture, I think that's a key skill. That's a key thing that sometimes we get so focused so in the weeds and so of what I'm doing today to take your head up every once in a while. So I feel like whatever these, like whether you use Hoshin planning or whatever it might be, again, another key learning is just making sure you're taking the time to pick your head up, look around you, see what's going on and bring that back. So whether you're bringing that back to your manager and they may have the answers or they may not, they may need to bring it to their leader and up the chain. So that, so, but, so I think that that is absolutely, absolutely a key part.

Yeah. Something that we've been exploring internally just over the years as we've practiced just strategic planning. There'll be some objectives, some like we use the X matrix. Right. And so our, you know, so we'll have an annual objective over here on the, the, the 9 o' clock and then the 12 o' clock is the, the improvement priority. So these are the things that we're going to do to try to achieve those annual objectives. But I would tell you the thing that, that, that we've experimented the most, I would say is then over there at three o', clock, which is, you know, how are we going to measure this? And you know who's going to do it? It's pretty straightforward. You assign an owner and secondary and all that. But that how are we going to measure it? Like there's sometimes to where it's like, you know, it's very easy. It's a number even, you know, we're aiming for some number in a month and you can measure it right and you can see how you're doing. But other times we might have some improvement priorities that are more sort of project based, you know, like more project managey if you will. It's not really a word, but you know what I mean? And those ones are even more difficult because then it's just more like, okay, well when we meet at the end of January, where do we hope to be? Right? And then at the end of January, where are we right? And so there you can still get your red, green and yellow. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how you go about or how you've seen people go about measuring the various initiatives, whether they're projects or just actions that you need to do.

Yeah, so I have a saying. I really do believe we do these projects for a reason. We don't just do the project for the sake of the project. I would say I don't think I've ever found a time when we did right. It was always for something. So whether that was again for it may be for you need to do it. It may be you just need to do it. This is for a government regulatory or it's something that you need for your risk management or something like that. Or whether it's customer service, you can improve your customer service. You may not see the direct relationship, but you should see that it's moving it in the right direction. So that's number one. So I always, when I do projects within the charter, that objective should be something measurable. So that's one aspect I would say that there should. I believe that there should always be a business reason why you're doing it. And you should see and that connection to the business reason. The second is way I would say is sometimes what I'll do is I would come top down. Okay, So I come top down. So maybe I mean we can give an example like you want to. The objective is super top line. Let's just say like something really like high line, like customer service related. Right. Where then the breakdowns of those metrics, whether it's be a CSAT score, whether it be the surveys at the end of them, whatever those might be, and keep breaking it down and breaking down, and breaking down to a lower and lower levels. So sort of like a cascading right of those metrics and they should be able to get to something like, I can measure this and it should correlate to these. So these leading and lagging indicators, like it should correlate to those other higher level metrics as well. So I think there's different ways to do it. But I do believe there should always be something. And we talked about the idea of smart goals. Right. It's measurable, there should always be something. And I do believe that it makes you so much more fulfilling if you understand how you're impacting overall organization and the impact that you're making and what you're doing.

Love it. Good stuff. Well, this is very good. And again, I think it's perfect timing. Hopefully companies are already, you know, well on to their, their strategy for 2024. But if you're not, don't despair. Start, you know, and you know, start at the top. Right. And make sure that everybody's aligned up there and then, and then slowly work it down. I don't think there's any massive. I mean the whole calendar year thing is such an artificial, weird thing that we do, you know, as if like by December you got to hit this. It's like, why? You know, it's like we're big fans on the rolling 12 month kind of thing. Like are we healthy? Is think, are we trending in the right direction? Right. But you know, unfortunately a lot of people listening are beholden to the month end and to the, to the, to the year end and all this kind of stuff for accounting reasons. But, but fight that as much as you can. That'd be my advice. Go for that rolling 12 month kind of mindset more than trying to hit a particular annual objective.

Yeah. And having, and having those ways to like, I guess, to make it real. Right, to make it real. Whether that's a monthly review or that quarterly review. Yeah. Not just like putting it on a shelf, forgetting about it. That's like the other tip, Ron, is as long as you have some sort of a method to keep looking at it and okay, if you didn't hit it this month, then what do we do next? What are we going to do? Change. How are we going to change and do things differently next month? That's a key.

Good. Hey, Karen, if folks want to connect with you personally, what's the best way? Website, Social media?

Sure. Well, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I post a lot about different things. So That's Karen Friedenberg. My business is performance improvement consulting. We also have a LinkedIn page and our website is piconsult.net and all those different ways. It's great to stay in touch. Love to hear from everyone.

Yeah, so everybody go connect with Karen. So just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening to. We'll have all the links there. And hey, I appreciate you coming back on. Let's not wait, what was it, three years ago? My gosh, time flies. But yeah, let's do it again down the road and keep up the great work. And thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Ron. Thanks for having me.

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