Strategy Needs Accountability: How to Drive Project Follow-Through and Execution

Foreign Hi everybody. I am Ted Jackson, founder and Managing Partner here at clearpoint Strategy. Thank you for joining us today. We're very glad to have you. Throughout this webinar, we encourage you to ask questions, so please drop them in the Q and A and angel and I will feed them in. And those that don't feed in naturally we will take at the end. Angel? Yep.

And I'm Angelo, Product Manager here at clearpoint. Today we're diving deep into a topic that's make or break for strategy at execution, accountability.

We've seen it a hundred times. Organizations have a strategic plan, but it never fully comes to life. Why? It's not because it's a bad plan. It's because there's no clear process to ensure people are actually doing the work and reporting on it.

Today we'll show you how to bake accountability directly into your strategy process. Whether you're a clearpoint user or just here for ideas, we'll give you actionable steps. You can start today to make your strategy work harder for you, we're going to discuss role clarity, workflows, approvals, and of course, using AI.

And for those who are new to Clearpoint, let me give you a 60 second overview. Because Clearpoint is a strategy reporting and performance management tool, you can build your strategy in any framework, whether you're using the balance scorecard, okrs, strategic horizons v2 mom, or a custom framework unique to your organization. Let me just share my screen quickly. So this is an organization called Domino's. Maybe you've heard of it before. They are using a balanced scorecard and when I scroll down, you can see their, their financial objectives measures. Scroll down more, you can see their customer objectives, measures, initiatives, etc. Right. So if we drill in, we can see, you know, an objective can have a lot of details. With analysis recommendations and measures, we can drill down into a measure and at the measure level, of course we can have analysis recommendations. But here we get charts and we get data tables. This data can be put in manually, it can be automatically uploaded. There are a lot of things that you can do here. And then in the initiative world, you can have an initiative with a start date, an end date, a percent complete, some milestones, and you can see a full Gantt chart as well. So with clearpoint, there's more to it than that. We do have a wide variety of views for you. Like at that objective level, you can visually see everything that's linked to your objective. And if you wanted to link, say that new initiative over to that objective, you can just do drag and drop. You can see the linkage there. It shows right up with a very quick summary of what you're looking at. At the measure level, we can show all of your KPIs or measures in chart format here. But you could also switch that over to what we call series data, where you could see all of your KPIs and their data. You can import and export that, downloading and uploading it. And then over at the initiative level, imagine using a Kanban board to track your initiatives and say, okay, it's time to evaluate some of our new ones. We approved Domino's having a new crust and we rejected the idea of delivery bots. Of course, I've seen some of those delivery bots out there. So you all know this is just a sample account. So all of these items can be updated automatically. You can link to your teams and to your email. You can create briefing books each quarter for regular strategy reporting.

It's flexible, customizable, and designed to help you track goals, measures, projects and initiatives all in one place. And the best part, you can scale the complexity as your organization grows in maturity.

So let's get back to the topic of accountability. Let's start with the foundation of accountability. Role clarity. One of the biggest killers of strategy execution is when it's unclear who who's responsible for what.

We recommend defining three distinct roles for each objective. KPI or Project. 1. Analyst. They're the ones entering the data, updating project milestones and making sure the numbers are in. 2. Owner. This person writes the analysis, interprets performance and makes recommendations for next steps. And three, Sponsor Provides oversight, reviewing updates, asking smart questions and signing off before the information reaches leadership.

This three tiered system ensures that nothing falls through the cracks. But we know that some teams are smaller or just getting started. And that's okay.

Exactly. If you're a small team, one person might wear multiple hats. They might be both the analyst and the owner, or even all three roles. That's fine. The point is to start with clarity. And as your process matures, you can evolve the structure.

And with clearpoint, you don't have to set it up all at once. You can begin with a single owner, and then in year two or three, start defining those analysts and sponsors as your process becomes more sophisticated. Let me show you. Let me see if I can jump back over to clearpoint, where we were in that Delivery Excellence initiative. Let me just change the layout as we become more sophisticated with time. So we have a role called collaborators. I can just drag it out on the screen, collaborator would be like teammates or people that you that are helping the owner, Joe Jordan with delivery excellence. But since we talked about these other roles, let me find analyst, drag them out on the screen and the sponsor drag them out quickly. I'll just quickly make these a little smaller so we can see them and manage them easily. So I'll save that layout with clearpoint. Just double click. So we could make our analyst Kelly from Technology, make our sponsor Frank from Restaurant Operations, and then we could have some collaborators, you know, from supply chain, legal and and international. So as easy as that, you can just save these users directly in here. And then if you want to see how they look, we could click directly on initiatives. Here we have our initiatives, their percent complete, their status and owner, I could just add those additional people that we want. The analyst, the sponsor, I think collaborators was up here at the top. And then just to get some better spacing so we could see all of those collaborators here and then this is fully editable, so we could just start adding all of our analysts, sponsors and collaborators to our other initiatives on the way or on the same page. Right. So it's really easy to, to quickly roll out these new people as you start using them. As your strategy gets a little more sophisticated.

Once you've got these roles in place, everything downstream like reporting and decision making becomes smoother.

Jump back over to our PowerPoint.

Now, even with clear rules, people are busy, deadlines are missed, data updates fall behind, and that's where workflows come in.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are we talking about? I don't understand the need for workflows.

Well, the point is not to have ownership, but to execute strategy. And the owners are the people that do the work.

So if I was the analyst or the project owner, I would need to make my updates each month or each quarter?

Yes. And if we were using Excel, PowerPoint or any tool, I would be harassing you to make your updates because you would either ignore me or put me off until the last minute.

That checks out. I'm pretty busy. So how does this relate to workflows?

Again, workflows were designed to help remind you to make your updates in a timely manner, which saves me from harassing you. And we'll just have clearpoint do it instead. Instead.

Tell me more.

Great. Let me share my screen and we can jump back into clearpoint. Great. So we can check out how reporting workflows can help automate accountability. I'm going to start by adding in a new workflow and we'll call this Q2 review. We'll include just the main scorecard here, Domino's Corporate, since that's the scorecard we want to make updates to. And for the workflow period, I'm just going to select June 25th or June 2025 to align with that Q2 period. And finally for our start day, I'll be setting that to June 30th again aligning with our Q2 review period completion. And then we'll give ourselves about three weeks to go ahead and get those updates in. So we'll set our end date to July 21st here, then we can hit save.

So we have about four days to make our updates. I think we're on it.

Perfect. Now that we've got that set up, who is responsible for making updates? So next I'm going to edit this Q2 review on the right hand side. From here you can add in detailed instructions for your end users like Please log in and complete your Q2 updates before July 21st and you can add in more details to help guide them as they make their updates as well. Over in the Options tab you can choose who will be responsible for making updates. You so in this first dropdown here we've selected just owners and we'll stick with that. But you can see this is where you'd be able to select if you want your collaborators, analysts or sponsors to come in and make their updates as well. In each of these dropdowns below you can also choose what should be updated based on scorecard, element type and status for a more tailored workflow, but we'll go ahead and leave it as it is set up currently. And finally over in the Emails tab you can set up recurring reminder emails that automatically go out to users that are a part of that workflow. So in this case again our owners and you can set up these emails to go out at a cadence that works for your reporting deadline. So let's set up an update reminder for the owners who are part of this workflow. I'll go ahead and just name it Q2 review reminder. The subject will be please make your Q2 updates and in the body of the email I'll stick with the same simple instructions. Please log in and complete your Q2 updates before July 21st and then again I'll hit save. And now that our workflow is set up, I'll hit save up here as well. And now admins can go ahead and click into the workflow to get a great workflow summary view here. So at a glance we're able to track any completion over time and we'll get a chart that fills out as well as some status completion indicators here and in the table below you're able to see a breakdown of all the tasks by user and their completion status on the right hand side. And finally you can also check out any workflow emails that you have scheduled that have been sent or will go out in the future.

Hey angel, we got a question from the audience. It's from Paul. It says I want to set up something like this, but I want it to recur quarterly. Do I have to manually add all the future workflows?

No. Something that you can do to help automate and get your workflow set up ahead of time is just duplicate and change the dates for this Q2 review. So in theory you could have your Q2 review, Q3 review and Q4 all set up ahead of time and have all your emails also built in to go out as your Q2 or as your quarters pass.

This is a total game changer for admins. No more chasing updates via email threads or spreadsheets. It all seems to happen automatically within the system.

Plus workflows let you create a predictable rhythm. So quarterly like we have here, monthly or however often you need.

Let me show you the end user experience because this is where a lot of things fall short. Let me see if I can share my screen again this sharing. Yes, sorry. It's like I'm brand new to to Zoom. This is a workspace and my workspace has the two items that angel just assigned me in that workflow. But while I'm here it also has one of the key charts that I'm focused on. I can see all my recent exports where people have been reaching out to me or or creating mentions in the tool and any notifications have. So this franchise first portal, I remember I updated that one just yesterday so I could go ahead and mark that one as complete. But the loyalty program launch and expansion. Let me look at that in more detail. Yep, I can see this one. I remember this. I need to do some analysis here. I'm going to quickly have the AI in Clearpoint do some analysis. This looks good. I'm actually just going to copy this over and and then think about some recommendations. Oh perfect. I like these also. And I'm going to hit save there and then mark this one as complete. And of course I get Internet confetti, which is my favorite reward for doing online work. For the casual user, this isn't intimidating, right? You log in, your tasks are right in front of you, you make your updates, you check them off and you're done. So if someone only logs in once a quarter, they still find it easy and painless.

And then from my end, as the person who set up the workflow in the workflow summary view, I can now see those updates that TED has made as the user clearpoint support. And so I'll quickly just filter that out here so we can check out the updates that they've made. And perfect. We can track when they were completed with dates of when they were marked as complete and check in on any incomplete tasks if there were any remaining.

Awesome. That's really cool. Let's move on to workflows or sorry, to approvals. We just did workflows.

So workflows do help with consistency, but how do you ensure quality? That's where approvals come in. If you're a control freak, you'll love approvals. Have you ever wanted to make sure that people are writing what you want them to write?

Angel, I think you mean writing in the same professional style, providing thoughtful analysis, things like that.

Yes. So if you want to go double check the way people are filling in their analysis and their data before you go to press, then you probably already have an approval process in place.

You mean the process where everyone sends their Excel and PowerPoint stuff to you? You get to read it and edit it before you send it out to the executive team?

Okay, I'm guilty of that. And it takes so much time. I wish there was an easier way to control everyone or manage consistency throughout the reporting process.

Well, in clearpoint you can assign a scorecard wide approver. Someone that sees the full picture, goals KPI's projects and their interdependencies. They can approve, tweak or reject updates before they're finalized.

For leadership, this adds a layer of quality control. No more showing up to a meeting and hearing that number looks wrong or we didn't agree on that project status.

Let me show you what this looks like in clearpoint. Here we are in an innovation scorecard. This is a child scorecard in the domino's account. It's a division. So let's look at the approval setup. You can choose to require approvals for updates to an element for edits, to an element for adding something new or deleting something in the account. Since we're in year two of this multi year strategy, we're just tracking updates. And I made myself, I'm logged in as clearpoint support. I made myself the approver for updates. So if I go in and look at my approvals. It looks like Katie has submitted a few. A few items to approve. Let's look at one. First one is the milestone tracker rollout. I can see what was in the recommendation section that she submitted yesterday and I can see the proposed new value. I like this improvement. Let's send a quick message to Katie saying let's even respond up here. Katie, this looks great. Nice job. Send a note and approve the update. So she'll get a notice when the update gets approved. But I also just wanted to send a nice helpful message along. Let's look at the other one. She's saying we should push this project off until 2027 because she's worried we don't have the resources. You know, we must have the test kitchen up and running in 2025. What resources do you need? Make that so I'm going to reject this and when I reject it, I need to put a note in the comments and I'm trying to say, well, no, we're actually going to do this now, but trying to be nice about it. So tell me what resources you need to be able to make it happen rather than suggest we put it off. And so that's how you, you do approvals. And if approvals are, are too.

Are.

Are too formal for your organization, I could go back to my delivery excellence where we were before and I could just put in just a mention instead. So I could, I know that I made these updates, but Joe is the owner of it. I could say, you know, at Joe, can you review my hard thought analysis and recommendations please, and send a note that way. So just sending a mention out is going to notify Joe. I could have linked to the analyst, the sponsor and others and tag them really for a second set of eyes feedback or help. It's, it's like accountability without that bureau bureaucracy level. And Joe's going to get that not only in the tool, but he'll get it in teams and he'll also get it in email as well.

Now onto AI, everyone's favorite buzzword. You can use artificial intelligence to make your reporting smarter and faster.

Are you suggesting that I can use ChatGPT or Claude or GROK or Deep Seq or something else to analyze all my information?

You know that AI can do more deep thinking in 15 seconds than you'll do all day, Shay.

But I get carpal tunnel syndrome from all the copying and pasting to AI. And should I be giving them all.

Of my strategy information at Clearpoint, we've thought of all that we have AI built right into the tool, right where you need it. And your data is never shared outside of the application, certainly not for training points purposes. Ted showed AI at the initiative level and generated some analysis and recommendations as he was making his updates. But we also have it at the measure and objective level. I'll show you how you can leverage it for measures. So back over to clearpoint. I'm taking a look at this measure called sales growth here and what I want to do is just double click into this analysis field and we're going to go ahead and use our AI magic wand and again analyze our data here. So this looks great, but I do want to push it a little harder and just see what other insights the AI can provide. So I'm going to ask it to also look at long term trends and add in some industry benchmarking into the analysis. Awesome. And this looks great. So I'll go ahead and copy it out and I'll paste that into my analysis field. Then we'll go ahead and hit save here so you can make sure that your analysis covers whatever areas that you want to include in there for any additional insights and, and that will also be carried forward into your recommendations. So I'll go ahead and we'll regenerate the recommendations here so that it aligns with our analysis as well.

This AI is awesome. For a first draft, you can ask it to summarize trends, even suggest next steps. My job's now a piece of cake.

But let's be clear, AI doesn't own the accountability. A human still needs to review, edit and approve the analysis before it's final. Then at the scorecard level, let's go ahead and jump over to a report here. Our AI can generate an overarching summary that's perfect for pre reads before a leadership meeting. So we're taking a look at the Project Management Dashboard report here and we'll see how AI can summarize our entire scorecard. So for our scorecard analysis once again, I'm going to double click into the analysis field here and select that AI magic wand. For the overall scorecard, I'm interested in generating an exception report. And a scorecard exception report would highlight the items on your scorecard that need attention. So for example, any measures or objectives that are off track, not updated, or missing analysis. So rather than sifting through everything, this report calls out the exceptions so you can focus on what matters most. So let's go ahead and proceed with that. And that looks great. So now it's ready to paste into the analysis field. From here I'll go ahead and hit copy paste this in and hit save.

But again, someone has to review that summary, make sure it reflects reality, highlight any sensitive areas that leadership needs to discuss.

Yes, I think you're picking it up. AI can make you much more efficient, but there's always a human in the loop.

Excellent. While you were giving that demo, Erica wrote in about an earlier item that we discussed and maybe I just missed it in the question because I was so excited about showing things says is the approval flow only available for the new version of clearpoint? I don't see it in my current account. So workflow approvals or sorry, approvals in clearpoint. They are at the enterprise level of clearpoint. So just talk to your to your customer success manager about getting access to it and trying it out. I'm going to share my screen again. As you all know, we're running out of time, so get your last questions in as we recap. So what do we talk about today? First, we talked about establishing roles, having clarity, and who's responsible for what. So you may not need all the roles we talked about today, but your strategy breaks down if you just put marketing or sales in charge of an objective. You really need to designate some individuals. Then we talked about workflows, right? You need a process in place that doesn't get bogged down with repeated requests for information via emails, calls, walking over to beg someone for data. Workflows are repeatable, predictable and easy. Approvals, right? With approvals, you can bring out the control freak in you to ensure quality. All jokes aside, you do want to have reports that your leadership team can trust, and having a second set of eyes is really helpful. And finally, we discussed the role of AI. We showed you how you can use tools to allow your organization to move faster while still keeping a human behind the wheel of the process. If you're not using it now, you will be in the near future.

Strategy reporting is hard. It takes real work to gather data, analyze it, and prepare insights across the organization. But with the right tools and a culture of accountability, you can make that process easier and more efficient. Quarter after quarter order.

If you're interested in talking more about accountability, please reach out. We're happy to share war stories, show you how to overcome some of your challenges as well. Whether you're starting small or scaling up, clearpoint's here to help.

Thanks again for joining. We hope you're walking away with practical ideas to strengthen accountability in your strategy.