Study guide: Short Cycle Strategy

📋 Course Outline

1. Strategy Execution and the Strategy Gap
2. Reconnecting Strategy and Execution
3. Dynamism and Strategic Accessibility
4. The Three Interrelated Strategy Cycles
5. The Nine Steps of Short Cycle Strategy
6. Guidelines for Short Cycling

📖 1. Strategy Execution and the Strategy Gap

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Strategy Execution: Strategy execution aims to minimize the gap between the aspired strategy and the realized strategy.

📝 Essential Points

📌 The actual strategy is what the organization currently has, whereas the aspired strategy is what it seeks to achieve.

📖 2. Reconnecting Strategy and Execution

★ Must-know

• Traditional strategy generation occurs before strategy execution, sometimes leaving months or years before the strategy is put into practice.

• Short Cycle Strategy reconnects strategy generation and execution, turning them into an iterative and more approachable process.

Further detail

• Traditional strategy is often generated by the CEO or management team at the top of the organization and is expected to trickle down to those responsible for execution.

💡 Memory Hook

Top-down strategy generation is separated from execution; short cycles reconnect thinking and doing.

📖 3. Dynamism and Strategic Accessibility

★ Must-know

• Strategy is dynamic because circumstances inside or outside an organization can change during execution, and new learning can prompt adjustments to the strategy.

• Short Cycle Strategy enables faster execution and timely strategic adjustments.

Further detail

• In a complex and uncertain world, planning five years ahead without expecting adjustments is no longer realistic.

• Short Cycle Strategy makes strategy more accessible through iterative, incremental development and testing of ideas rather than months of analysis and planning.

• Strategy can target one of the following at a time:

  • business unit
  • department
  • product or service
  • project
  • location

• An organization can pilot a strategy in one business unit or department, use guided trial and error to develop it more effectively, and then spread it through the rest of the organization.

📖 4. The Three Interrelated Strategy Cycles

★ Must-know

• Short Cycle Strategy is a deliberately emergent process consisting of three interrelated cycles: strategy generation, strategy execution, and an overall cycle connecting the two.

• 🔄 The strategy generation cycle proceeds through:

  1. activation
  2. mapping
  3. assessing
  4. innovating

• 🔄 The strategy execution cycle proceeds through:

  1. formulating the strategy
  2. bridging
  3. organizing
  4. planning
  5. realizing

Further detail

📌 The overall cycle intentionally moves from strategy generation to execution, while remaining emergent because execution can feed back a need for unintended strategic change.

• The strategy generation cycle is emergent because it is designed to benefit from unexpected events and unanticipated ideas.

💡 Memory Hook

Generation and execution are iterative; the overall cycle deliberately moves from generation to execution while allowing feedback.

📖 5. The Nine Steps of Short Cycle Strategy

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Activating: Activating makes key people in the organization receptive to new strategy and mobilizes the resources needed for strategy generation.
• Bridging gaps: Identifying differences between the current and aspired strategy and defining projects and tasks to close them.
• Realizing strategy: Putting the execution plan into action and managing relevance, progress, and emotions over time to effect the aspired strategy.
• Mapping strategy: Identifying the organization’s strategy by describing it through its ten core elements.
• Assessing strategy: Assessing strategy judges and tests the quality of the organization’s strategy against relevant criteria.
• Innovating strategy: Innovating strategy renews and redesigns the organization’s strategy through incremental or radical innovation.
• Formulating strategy: Capturing the organization’s strategy in words and pictures that the target audience can understand.
• Organizing strategy: Identifying the most important organizational deficiencies and defining projects and tasks to address them.
• Planning strategy: Developing and committing to a dynamic, prioritized course of action and a way of working to close the gap between actual and aspired strategy.

📝 Essential Points

• Short Cycle Strategy has nine steps: five for strategy generation and four for strategy execution.

📖 6. Guidelines for Short Cycling

★ Must-know

• Short Cycle Strategy favors iteration within strategy generation and within execution, with as little iteration as possible between the two cycles.

• The overall cycle should be as long as possible for clarity and stability, and a strategy should not be changed more often than necessary.

• Organizations should systematically monitor strategy relevance and begin a new strategy generation cycle while things are still going well rather than waiting for problems.

Further detail

📌 Execution can begin once there is sufficient confidence in the strategy; perfection is not required.

• In practice, multiple strategy steps can be worked on simultaneously because an organization continues executing its existing strategy while generating a new one.

💡 Memory Hook

Iterate within generation and execution, but move between them only as much as necessary.