Who doesn’t want them: successful implementations? Achieving a long-awaited goal, turning the desired strategy into reality, seeing the project result in front of you or celebrating a successful market entry with the innovation.
Implementation momentum – 3 principles
What characterizes A-Performance implementations that have a RoEx® that increases continuously and averages 0.7-0.8?
3 basic principles are the basis for A-Performance implementations:
I. Depth
II Target images and
III Implementation policy.
First, let’s take a look at these 3 principles for high-performance conversions, before going into more detail about the 5 performance types (A-E) and their RoEx® spans.
Principle I: Conceptual depth – implementation management
Most implementations have a poor RoEx® due to a lack of conceptual depth. They fail because things have not been thought through deeply enough and not enough or not at all from the end, i.e. from the result. These are the good strategies that are clear on the surface, but where nobody knows exactly what to do – the WHDJG phenomenon (“what-does-this-mean-right-now” phenomenon). Or there are projects where more attention is paid to milestones and plans than to the actual goal: achieving certain results.
Example: The strategy implementation of an automotive supplier
Phase I: A good strategy is developed following tough workshops, which are preceded by thorough analyses and scenario work. Strengths and weaknesses are worked out, markets from which the company intends to withdraw are identified, as are those in which attractive growth is possible. The necessary product guidelines and new post-sales activities to secure the competitive position are worked out. The strategy is in place.
Phase II: The strategy is communicated and conveyed to operational management so that business cases, implementation and medium-term planning can be addressed.
Phase III: Big meeting. At the kick-off for HORIZONT, as the program is called, top management presents the strategy to all those involved. In group sessions, the program management discusses the interim implementation goals with the operational managers, regulates the program mechanics and agrees on milestones. The individual projects are finalized and it’s time to get started.
An everyday “e-performance” begins (see Fig. 3). The further course often looks like this: The individual projects start, each sub-project has its target figures and milestones and aligns its activities to these in good faith. Everyone has “their” topics and problems to solve, traffic lights turn yellow, turn red, are addressed with countermeasures and then turn green again. Everything is reported to program management.
What happens in the process: Over time, the projects have less and less to do with each other! The actual goal, the implementation of the strategy, becomes less and less of a focus. The focus is more on pursuing individual plans. In addition, projects are moving further and further apart: they become increasingly isolated, are no longer interlinked and are usually not even synchronized.
Coordination difficulties, redundancies as well as “black holes” occur. Justification and blame for lack of progress are the next stage, until each sub-project is just “minding its own business”. In the worst-case scenario, negative politics even arise and the entire implementation is declared a failure. Fortunately, this is not often the case, so that adjustments can be made here and there and the “child” can still be brought across the finish line. Everything is fine – except that it could have been easier, quicker and with much less effort.
How should it have gone differently? It starts with the kick-off, which was purely HOW-oriented. What they need is a consistent “WHAT orientation”.
The key factor “depth” requires that you consistently think and work from the result. And in detail. “Of course, we do that!”, I always hear. Take a self-critical approach, only 20-25% of implementations do this.
In practical terms, this means that you need a well-founded implementation concept before you can plan and get started on the basis of an objective or strategy.
An implementation concept describes what will be different in the future in a model-like, compact and highly structured manner. Depending on the complexity of the project/implementation, an implementation concept, which we also like to call an “implementation bible”, can be between 20 and 60 pages long.
A pyramidal structure is important: starting from overall models of the company, the models are broken down to the individual areas or even departments.
The business model describes the basic mechanics, the value creation model describes what each area will achieve and in what way, with a management/control model of how this value creation will be managed in the future, and finally how they will source the whole thing based on quantity structures (sourcing model) and have to set themselves up for this (organizational model).
In these models, you describe the individual “puzzle pieces” of the future to be created. They formulate the result, i.e. the “what” to be created – not the “how” – in a logical, model-like and very structured way. And all areas, including supporting areas such as IT or finance, have a value creation model with which they make a contribution. No contribution, no value creation or at least concrete support for it – no raison d’être.
In this way, an organization learns to think through the “what” as part of an implementation and to deal intensively with the whole and the individual pieces of the puzzle – this not only saves a lot of time in the end, but above all creates the necessary certainty that everyone knows exactly what is being done and why.
Procedure plans only provide pseudo-security. Implementation concepts have nothing to do with planning.
How detailed you need to be in your implementation concept depends on two factors:
1) How high is the uncertainty about the “what” in your “team”?
2) How long does the implementation take and how far must the imagination of those involved reach?
The greater the uncertainty about the “what”, the more pronounced the WHDJG phenomenon in a strategy, for example, the more detailed and specific you need to be.
The longer the implementation period, the more difficult it is for people to imagine exactly what is meant and what needs to change and how. You have to make sure that the concretization fits into the normally distributed thinking/imagination distance of 6-9 months.
Calculate 2-4 weeks for a good implementation concept, depending on the complexity of the implementation. In one of the next Secrets of EXECUTION® (SoE), I will provide you with a process model for creating one.
Principle II: Target images – implementation management
This conceptual basis, the necessary “depth”, provides security and clarity and thus creates the basis for productive implementation.
This alone does not create implementation momentum and your RoEx® would remain average. Logic makes people think, emotions make them act. An implementation concept is purely logical in the truest sense of the word.
Remember really good implementation projects from your past: there was always a compelling element, a clear idea of what was to be created. And not on a factual/logical level, but on an emotional level. The team was “on fire” for the project. They wanted to achieve the result.
If you want a high-performance implementation, you need to “graft” this emotional traction onto the logic. Caution: Without the conceptual foundation, you will create what I call “change chaos” (see illustration on p. 10).
Actively create emotionally charged objectives, “future films” – overall, for each area, each sub-project or even each department. The team, at least the critical mass, must be able to “see” what the result looks like, how it feels, so to speak, when you are finished, what is different, what is new.
The head of sales must be able to “see” and “feel” what the abstract description of the new customer orientation means. The IT manager “sees” how what is described in the concepts will be lived in the future (in two years’ time), and the “future movie” of the Head of Customer Service fits into this overall picture.
This does not happen by itself – they have to actively take care of the “generation” of these “images”, these “future films”.
I have experienced two types of successful managers of A-Performance implementations: those who have an aptitude, a natural feel for it and do it “just like that” in conversations and workshops, and the majority who manage this principle systematically and purposefully.
Two challenges need to be overcome:
1. each person responsible needs a clear, individual, authentic future film for their area, their sub-project during implementation. This requires that the individual interests of those involved must be aligned with the overall implementation.
2. the respective “future movie”, the respective “image of the future” must fit into the thinking distance of those responsible. The average “thinking distance” with which people can anticipate future visions for intrinsic motivation is 6-9 months. Only very few people can work with images of the future that are “further away”. The difficulty and therefore also the art: you have to help your people to generate the images that are “suitable” for them and still possible in their imagination, or help them to develop these for themselves.
The final touchstone is to check whether control variables have a significant influence on their results.
On the one hand, we check whether a performance indicator is helpful but not really decisive in influencing a certain performance indicator. For example, it may be the case that the number of customer visits is helpful but not decisive information for the development of sales. Here we need to think boldly and sharply in order to eliminate these variables. Many KPIs unnecessarily inflate the system because they are merely informative, helpful or interesting, but not necessary.
On the other hand, critical variables are often overlooked if they lie outside the usual sphere of experience. These variables are very often “soft” variables, such as the “degree of motivation in sales” or the “perceived degree of support for the field sales force by the internal sales force”. There are people who, like Steve Jobs, have a natural talent, a “knack” for giving their managers and teams the right inspiration at exactly the right thinking distance and thus creating the necessary basis for implementation momentum.
From experience, I can say that you need at least 3-4 full-day workshops to initialize the target images and synchronize them completely for the first time. You then need to ensure that these visions of the future are discussed intensively at least every 2-4 weeks as part of project reviews. The implementation concepts (1st principle) are the “foothold” for the exchange of ideas so that focus, discipline and efficiency are ensured.
In one of the upcoming Secrets of EXECUTION® (SoE) I will provide you with process options and tools for generating these target images.
Principle III: Implementation policy – implementation management
Let’s move on to the last of the 3 principles: implementation policy. Even if you have drawn in the backbone of an A-performance with good implementation concepts and hung the proverbial carrots at the right distance with the right target images, in case of doubt you will only experience an “everyday implementation”, an E-performance or, with luck, a “lucky punch”. If
If you want to achieve a RoEx® around 0.8 and a “conversion flow”, a targeted conversion policy is necessary, whether consciously or unconsciously.
In Germany in particular, opinions are often divided: I either see pure implementation politicians who only achieve a push performance at best (see box on p. 9) or the “change faction” who believe that once everyone has understood what needs to be achieved, the meaning is clear and things will fall into place. The latter are usually just EP performers or “lucky punches” after all.
Learn to pursue a targeted implementation policy! What does this mean? The combination of quotes from Bergstraesser and Macchiavelli on the right express exactly what good implementation policy is all about. I am deliberately avoiding the term “change management” here, as I find it inflationary and “self-serving” with its current excesses.
People have their own interests and goals, and that’s a good thing. They just need to know and understand them, be aware of the abilities and weaknesses of those involved and their relationships and relationships to each other, and conduct the whole orchestra consciously and not “by accidence”. Purposefully and skillfully! Whether you do this intuitively as a “born politician” or sketch out a political map and think the whole thing through like a game of chess – it’s a question of style and your own skills.
Progress
