1CMO

Growth strategy | Advisory | Force multiplier

Management

The Value of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

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“Because the purpose of business is create and keep a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” – Peter Drucker

There may be no more critical, yet inconsistently defined, senior leadership role than that of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

For any organization seeking to grow (dare I say that should be every organization!) having an experienced marketing leader is vitally important.

In collaboration with other senior leaders, the CMO is responsible for presenting the organization to the market, developing the strategy, and then executing the go-to-market plan to drive growth.

Does your organization need someone with the skills and experience required to be a CMO?

The answer is, “it depends.”

To define the unique value of a CMO we must think through several challenging aspects of the marketing function that sometimes feel like a Catch-22. These are:

  • Every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.
  • Every company needs a head of marketing, but not every company needs a chief marketing officer (CMO).
  • The purpose of marketing can mean something very different between organizations, depending on factors like the industry and customer target (i.e. B2B vs B2C)

Defining the CMO Role

Before we define the unique value of a CMO and explore whether you need one, let’s begin with a high-level job description:

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – Responsible for overseeing the planning, development and execution of an organization’s marketing and advertising strategy. Reporting directly to the CEO, the CMO’s primary responsibility is to help generate revenue by increasing sales through successful marketing for the entire organization, using market research, pricing, product marketing, marketing communications, advertising and public relations.

In many organizations, the scope of the CMO role expands to include sales enablement, sales team management, new business development, product development, channel partner management and customer success.

The Chief Marketing Officers is a member of the company leadership team and usually reports to the chief executive officer. In larger organizations, it is common to have a number of senior marketing managers responsible for various parts of the marketing strategy reporting directly to the CMO.

NOTE: The CMO role has traditionally been a full-time, in-house executive position. However, in recent years, as the value proposition and complexity of marketing strategy have increased, there has been a growing number of the part-time CMO or Fractional CMO roles. Stay tuned for an upcoming article that will explore the value proposition and use case for a fractional CMO.

The Unique Value of a CMO

It is true that every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.

Once you understand the true complexity and scope of the CMO role, you can begin to see that it is a challenging role. Only the most seasoned and experienced marketers, typically those who also have extensive company leadership experience and strategy development in their background, can be effective as CMO.

Furthermore, while every company should have a head of marketing, not every company needs a CMO.

There are a number of variables to consider when answering the question of whether your organization needs, and can justify having a CMO. The answer is ultimately very company-specific. However, there are some general factors to consider that can help make the decision. Rate each of the following criteria for your organization, on a low-to-high (or, small-to-large) scale:

  • Size of company
  • Company growth ambitions
  • Product/service value
  • Market size
  • Geographic scope
  • Market ecosystem complexity
  • Lead sources
  • Complexity of buyer’s journey
  • Length of sales cycle
  • Sales channels
  • Size of go-to-market (marketing and sales) team
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Industry competitiveness

Scoring: Generally, the higher you rank your organization on most or all of the above criteria, the more you can justify and should consider having a CMO on your leadership team.

The CMO Role is Complex and Evolving

As you saw in the brief job description above, the CMO role is complex. It is also rapidly evolving to meet unique company and market dynamics. The increasingly disruptive VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment that most organizations now operate in is just adding more fuel to the fire.

Driven by the forces of technology, increasingly complex digital interactions with the marketplace, and the growing ubiquity of social media channels, the marketing role has a growing sphere of influence in many organizations. The expectation is for the modern CMO to drive growth, deliver the brand vision and manage the customer experience across all touchpoints and intersections: print, digital, retail, mobile, social and more.

The role of marketing no longer ends with a sale. That is just the beginning. The span of marketing now extends into building relationships and delivering value to customers throughout their buyer journey. To be successful, CMOs must create and maintain a delicate balance between growth strategy, brand purpose and value, customer success, employee engagement, creative, technology, data and analytics.

Easy, right?!

Once you decide that your organizations needs a CMO, you must also think about what type. Depending on the maturity of the organization, the industry, the growth objectives, the skillsets and interests of the CEO and leadership team, and the type/scope/complexity of the sales process there can be different focal points for the CMO. This examination will drive different requirements for the CMO and create a different profile for the role.

An upcoming blog will examine the most common CMO archetypes.

More than Just a Marketer

While it is true that a head of marketing, a VP of marketing, and a CMO all have responsibility for the marketing function, that is where the similarity ends. The level of experience, strategic vision, and cross-functional leadership that a CMO provides is what sets them apart.  

A CMO is much more than just a great marketer for the organization’s products and services. They are growth strategists and partners with the CEO to promote the company and its vision. They collaborate with the leadership team to formulate the growth vision and strategy, and lead the execution of the go-to-market plans that propel the organization into the future.

Every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.

-Onward

Dealing with VUCA Forces

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“Expect the unexpected.” – Bear Bryant

We are accelerating into a new and unpredictable VUCA business environment.

The disruptive forces of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are playing out across almost every company and industry.

Against this backdrop, VUCA has proven to be a great organizing framework to help strategic leaders think about potential new threats. However, I have noticed that many organizations struggle to identify VUCA threats and translate them into actionable inputs as they are making their strategic plans.

In this article we’ll start to break down the challenge and work towards an approach for dealing with VUCA forces.

What is VUCA?

The United States Army War College was one of the first organizations to embrace the concept of VUCA, after the so-called Cold War ended. Military planners began to worry about the radically different, unstable, and completely unfamiliar international security environment that had emerged. They coined the acronym VUCA to describe it:

  • Volatile – Change that is rapid and unpredictable in its nature and extent. The challenge is unexpected or unstable, and may be of unknown duration. However, it is not necessarily hard to understand; knowledge about it is often available.
  • Uncertain – The present is unclear and the future is uncertain. Despite a lack of other information, the event’s basic cause and effect are known. Change is possible but not a given.
  • Complex – Many different, interconnected factors come into play, with the potential to cause chaos and confusion. The situation has many interconnected parts and variables. Some information is available or predictable, but the volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process.
  • Ambiguous – There is a lack of clarity or awareness about situations. Causal relationships are completely unclear. No precedents exist; you face “unknown unknowns.”

For simplicity, let’s look at each element in isololation:

  • In a purely volatile (but not uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, there is a lot of fast, but predictable change. 
  • On the other hand, in a purely uncertain (but not volatile, complex and ambiguous) world, it is hard to tell how things will develop.
  • In a purely complex (but not volatile, uncertain and ambiguous) world, things are hard to untangle and understand.
  • Finally, in a purely ambiguous (but not volatile, uncertain and complex) world, things are just hard to discern at all.

We see proof of these every day.

Unfortunately, out in the wild these dark forces do not typically present themselves in isolation. Rather, they can come at undesirable times, and in a variety of combinations and sequences. All of which makes the job of leaders infinitely more challenging.

Why is Understanding VUCA So Important?

While its origins lie in military planning, the concept of VUCA transfers perfectly to the world of business. Especially now.

Many experts predict that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are going to become even more prevalent in the future. To manage teams and create strategic plans for organizations in this “new normal” era of disruption, leaders need to be aware of the changes that this kind of environment can cause.

The turbulent and unpredictable VUCA forces of change will affect all organizations, at all levels. This type of environment poses many threats to an organization, including:

  • Overwhelming your team and making them anxious or nervous about the future.
  • Sapping their energy and motivation to take action.
  • Throwing uncertainty into their career paths.
  • Causing skills to become obsolete and forcing constant retraining.
  • Consuming large amounts of time and resources to understand and combat.
  • Increasing the complexity of making decisions, and the chances of making mistakes.
  • Slowing down the decision-making process.
  • Causing short-term thinking, and knee-jerk reactions.
  • Jeopardizing strategic long-term projects, developments and innovation.

As a result, we need to develop new skills, practice new behaviors, and take better approaches to manage the threat. If this environment affects your industry or organization, you have to reconsider the way you and your business plan and execute.

This is the value of the VUCA Strategic Planning Methodology.

Benefits of Embracing VUCA

Every leader, and every organization, has a basic choice when it comes to VUCA.

You can either allow VUCA forces to “own” you – running the risk of overloading and overwhelming your organization. Or, you can accept and manage it – working vigilantly with your team to plan for and mitigate its effects.

Ironically, if you decide to accept VUCA, you also start to gain immunity to its impact…

When you accept VUCA as something that is not going away, you also make yourself and your people less vulnerable, and you empower everyone to deal better with uncontrollable, unpredictable forces. You are shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. Practicing forward-looking strategy instead of backward-looking tactics.

VUCA is definitely a challenge for leaders, and presents an opportunity to develop and improve leadership and management skills. It is also an opportunity for individuals and teams to up their game and become more effective.

A Playbook for Managing in a VUCA World

How do you effectively manage teams and organizations with these VUCA forces?

  • The accelerating rate of change (volatility)
  • The lack of predictability (uncertainty)
  • The interconnectedness of cause-and-effect forces (complexity)
  • And the strong potential for misreads (ambiguity).

If we embrace and think about each of these disruptive forces we can begin to develop a playbook for managing and leading in a VUCA world. As we contemplate strategic approaches to combat each VUCA element, a strategic approach begins to emerge.

  1. We can counter volatility with vision. Creating a compelling vision, values, and purpose for your organization.
  2. We can meet uncertainty with understanding. Greater situational awareness, understanding what your competitors and the market are doing.
  3. We can react to complexity with clarity. Clearly structured teams and effective communication from leaders on the strategy and objectives.
  4. We can fight ambiguity with adaptability. An agile approach to developing a strategic plan and execution.

The next article will go deeper into this approach and explore each element in greater detail.

-Onward  

Marketing Enables Sales

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“In a great company everybody sells – not just the salespeople.” – Larry Ellison

Marketing enables sales.

In the world of growth strategy there is probably no more fundamental, yet frequently misunderstood, concept than the highly dependent relationship between marketing and sales.

In my work as a growth strategist, this concept is the starting point and a core intellectual foundation for building almost every go-to-market strategy and plan.

For business leaders who are responsible for growing the organization (if we are being honest, this should describe every leader!) this is a critically important concept.

Marketing and sales are vital functions of almost every organization, yet they often live in isolation. Even worse, in many companies they have an antagonistic if not completely dysfunctional relationship. Yet, marketing and sales need each other in order to be successful.

Basic Definitions, and the Challenge

For maximum effectiveness, marketing and sales have to be tightly connected, and working in an aligned and coordinated fashion. Unfortunately, for many organizations this is usually the exception, rather than the rule.

To set the stage for a solution, here are two basic definitions, which also help illustrate the root cause of the problem:

  • Marketing – According to the American Marketing Association marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. 
  • Sales – A sale is a transaction between two or more parties, typically a buyer and a seller, in which goods or services are exchanged for money or other assets.

Once you read these definitions it is easy to see they really are not that far apart. So why the divide?

We do not have to go too far back in history to find a clue. In the late 1940’s post-war growth economy, business strategists and educators began to describe marketing as owning the creation and promotion of a brand – focused on what is commonly called the 4 P’s (product, price, place, and promotion).

And sales? Well, sales was about making the sale to those prospects who responded to marketing’s outreach efforts. The wall began to form because marketing and sales were classically viewed as two completely separate functions, despite both being aligned around wanting to make sales happen.

You can thank technology for helping to bridge the gap. Over the years, as we have layered in more tech-enabled tools like email, websites, CRM, marketing automation, and social media we have begun to break down the wall that separated the marketing and sales functions.

We have removed much of the “friction” around commerce. Knowledge is free. Communication is cheap. The lines are blurred. The connection points between buyers and sellers exponentially multiplied. The pace accelerated.

Transactions can take place without face-to-face contact. At the touch of a button, we can blast messages to thousands or millions of prospects and in many cases they can buy directly without going to a store, or even talking to a human.

In today’s hyper-connected business world we can safely reach one conclusion: everyone is in marketing, and everyone is in sales.

This all makes perfect sense, except for one small problem – nobody told marketing or sales! In many organizations, they are still living in their separate silos.

A Solution to Bridge the Divide

Is there a proven solution to bridge the divide between marketing and sales?

Yes, there is. Many modern go-to-market organizations ensure alignment and collaboration between marketing and sales through a defined sales enablement strategy and approach.

  • Sales Enablement – The process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools to help sales people sell more effectively. The foundation of sales enablement is to provide sales people with what they need to successfully identify and engage the buyer throughout the buying process.

As its name implies, sales enablement is a way to make sure marketing enables sales. One simple way to think about sales enablement is helping buyers to buy, and sellers to sell. Sounds pretty smart and intuitive, doesn’t it?!

How does it work? It begins with enlightened company leaders who understand, and fundamentally believe, marketing enables sales.

Without this executive buy-in and support, sales enablement is doomed to fail, and marketing and sales will continue to live separately.

Next, the marketing and sales leaders of the organization must collaborate to build out their definition and required capability. This will look different for each unique organization since sales enablement consists of a diverse set of tactics and activities.

It often includes an expanded role for marketing to rate, score, and qualify leads. Moreover, in some organizations it can include an outbound lead generation function (sales development representatives) who work to identify and engage targeted prospects in order to develop them into marketing qualified leads (MQL).

It is very common to see sales enablement jointly owned by marketing and sales. In smaller organizations, it may be the same person overseeing both functions. In larger organizations it might roll up under a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or Chief Revenue Officer.

The sales enablement stakeholders then build out a strategy. They will need to define the approach to provide sales with the resources they need to sell. This strategy is always tailored to each specific sales team’s needs so they can best target their audience and close more deals. It should also include a thorough analysis of the resources, tools, content, and information to provide sales with to ensure it is helping them convert more leads into customers.

Sales Enablement ROI

Does sales enablement work?

My experience is that it does, and research backs it up! The Aberdeen Group found that companies with strong sales and marketing alignment realized 20% better annual revenue growth than peers without alignment.

Furthermore, a study from Marketingprofs found that sales and marketing teams with high alignment saw a 36 percent increase in win rates compared to less aligned organizations.

Conclusion – Go Forth Together

Sales and marketing alignment is a critical component for company growth.

The role of marketing is to identify who the “best” prospects are for a given brand, in terms of both purchasing power and the potential to become a brand ambassador. Then, marketing creates content that can engage the buyer with that brand and helps progress them on their buyer journey.

Salespeople and marketers close the deal together. It has always been a team effort, and it will always stay that way.

As social selling evangelist, Jill Rowley said, “The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.”

Creating sales and marketing alignment is one of the most important ways organizations can improve the effectiveness of both teams. Forging this alignment can also help to lower customer acquisition cost, while also providing a better sales experience for prospective customers.

In a follow-up article, we will explore specific tactics to help drive alignment between marketing and sales.

-Onward

Survival of the Most Adaptable

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“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin

You often hear Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, first published in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859, summarized as “survival of the fittest.” It turns out this is not exactly the correct interpretation.

In reality, Darwin actually meant survival of the most adaptable to change.

This concept of adaptability applies perfectly to today’s chaotic VUCA environment. I believe those organizations (and leaders) who are best able to adapt to change will grow and thrive. Those who don’t, won’t!

VUCA is the New Normal

Let’s face it, 2020 has been one wild rollercoaster of a ride. Across industries, the global pandemic has accelerated many changes that were already in motion, and created a number of new ones.

This unprecedented pace of change and disruption is only going to continue. This new VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment is here to stay.

As a result, leaders of organizations have a simple choice to make:

  • Will they stand by and hope for things to revert?
  • Or, will they choose to adapt to the new environment?

When you step back and think about it, the correct answer is obvious.

Things are very unlikely to return to where they were. Ever.

The world has changed. As a result, leaders and their teams need to adapt. Quickly.

Adaptability is the Key to Survival and Growth

The key to survival and growth in times of disruption is your mindset, your preparation, and your willingness to embrace change.

Leaders, organizations, and industries who are operating in survival mode are in deep trouble. When survival instincts prevent movement from the status quo, then extinction is near.

Those leaders, and their teams, who are adaptable and operate with an empowered, strategic, and future-focused way of thinking will win. The ability to be flexible, make quick decisions, and then take action will help them out-wit, out-play, and out-last their competitors. This is the key to survival and growth in a VUCA world.

Leaders and their teams need to get out of the building. They must be ever vigilant, always prepared to act quickly and decisively when confronted with moments of need or opportunity, adversity or change.

VUCA Strategic Planning is Your Secret Weapon

Any battle-hardened leader will tell you that no plan survives its first contact with the market! Therefore, it is wise to have a robust, yet flexible, approach when making plans for the future.

The VUCA Strategic Planning framework provides a disciplined approach to planning and achieving the Envisioned Future of the organization, while maintaining flexibility the ability to pivot quickly when VUCA strikes.

We do not always see it immediately, but disruptions also bring opportunity. We need to be observant and open to the possibility. Be calm and clearheaded enough to recognize it and react appropriately.

Strategic organizations and brave leaders are even willing to disrupt themselves!

To win in a disruptive VUCA environment, you must win in your mind first! This begins with preparation, and a comprehensive strategic plan.

To survive and thrive, high performing leaders and their teams:

  • Know their purpose, their why.
  • Understand their long-term goals. Their what.
  • Know how they need to work together. Their strategy. Their how.
  • Have connection. Share common core values.
  • Have robust situational awareness, considering both internal and external perspectives and market forces.
  • Have a comprehensive plan. Everyone on the team has a role to play.
  • Have considered and planned for alternative scenarios. Leaders are constantly asking “what if?…”
  • Maintain an active strategy portfolio in case the primary one fails.
  • Actively manage the execution of the plan to monitor progress, control resources, and have the ability to make quick course-corrections.

Conclusion – Adapt or Risk Failure

This is both an exciting and nerve-wracking time to be a business leader.

Regardless of your industry, or the size of your organization, today’s business climate is chaotic, fluid, and changing rapidly. Every leader and their team will have a unique set of problems to solve and challenges to overcome, requiring new ways of thinking and different tactics than the past.

As our new VUCA world continues to unfold, I believe there will be unlimited opportunity to grow and thrive for those organizations who are best able to adapt.

I encourage all leaders and organizations to embrace change and build adaptability as a core competancy.

-Onward

Getting From Vision to Results

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“A vision and strategy aren’t enough. The long-term key to success is execution. Each day. Every day.” – Richard M Kovacevich

After developing a VUCA Strategic Plan for their organization, many leaders and their teams think the hard work is over.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. This is when the real work begins!

It is now time to transition the focus from planning to execution. This is when the work of accomplishing the objectives defined in the plan happens. This is where winning organizations demonstrate a bias to action and MFGSD, and begin to execute their plans.

The Management Cycle is the final, and arguably most important, element in the VUCA Strategic Planning framework. For leaders, this is the vital process whereby they effectively manage the execution of the VUCA Strategic Plan for their organization. For individuals and teams, this is when they execute strategy and tactics all the way through to the achievement of defined objectives.

The VUCA Strategic Planning Management Cycle

A comprehensive VUCA Strategic Plan will have clearly articulated details on three important elements:

  1. Long-term goals for the organization.
  2. The strategy for reaching them.
  3. Tactical objectives to achieve along the way.

Furthermore, these objectives (hopefully designed using the SMARTER framework!) will specify assigned resources (people and financial), timelines, and metrics.

The tactical objectives are the work outcomes which are delegated to individuals and teams, and help to define the success or failure of their roles in the organization.

Leaders of the organizations (who are the fiduciary “owners” of the strategic plan) must now do what they do best: lead their teams and manage the plan to successful completion! This element, called the Management Cycle in the VUCA Strategic Planning framework, is where the work of the organization happens.

The Management Cycle is not a static step in the planning process, but actually an on-going management activity. Rather than a linear path from beginning to end, it is better to think of it as a circular loop structured very much like the traditional PDCA total quality productivity loop (plan-do-check-act), as follows:

  • Start/Continue – Think of this as a stage-gate at the top of the loop. It is where the work effort towards achieving the objective begins. It is also where leaders make the decision to continue the effort during a regular progress update…
  • Action/Execution – This is the stage where the actual work or activity happens. At some pre-defined, or ad hoc, point in time the activity is reviewed…
  • Evaluation – In this stage, individuals or teams review their progress with leadership. Specific metrics (defined in the VUCA Plan) are evaluated, which leads to…
  • React/Pivot/Stop – Following evaluation, leaders must guide the individual or team in making any necessary course corrections. This can include reacting to things like market feedback, experiment results, sales success, etc. The decision could be to continue for another execution cycle, pivoting to a different approach, or stopping the activity.

This iterative pattern of activity continues until the objective is either successfully achieved, or the objective is modified, or the objective is removed from the plan.

The cadence of the Management Cycle is heavily dependent on the nature of the actual activity. Singular events, or short-duration tactical activities, might not allow time for anything other than a completion/failure evaluation at the end. Whereas, longer-term or more complex activities might have a series of regularly scheduled reviews on some calendar basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.)

Many leading organizations (including Intel, Google, and LinkedIn) have enjoyed great success using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (sometimes referred to as OKR) to manage the execution of their strategic plans. Future blog articles will go into greater depth on the OKR framework for managing the achievement of objectives.

Where Does the Management Cycle Fit into the VUCA Strategic Planning Framework?

In the VUCA Strategic Planning framework, Core Ideology and Envisioned Future, combined with robust Situational Awareness detailing the current state of the organization and its operating environment, create the springboard for strategy development:

  • Core Ideology – Defining the mission, values, and purpose of the organization. These elements describe why the organization exists and what it stands for today. They form the “true North” guideposts for making strategic decisions and are the foundation for any VUCA plan.
  • Envisioned Future – Defining a clear vision of what the organization aspires to become or achieve and its long-term goals. These elements explain the desired “future state” and the long-term goals you and your team are working towards achieving in order to get there.
  • Situational Awareness – A thorough analysis of the environment in which the organization operates. Situational awareness involves knowing where you are (“current state”) and being aware of what is happening in your environment (internal and external perspective) to better understand how information, events, and one’s own actions might affect both immediate and future outcomes.

With this planning foundation in place, leaders should consider strategic options that will enable the organization to bridge the gap between the current state and the desired future state while factoring in the operating environment as revealed by the situational analysis. Strategy is the mechanism to do this:

  • Strategy – Defining the approach that will guide individuals and teams on “how” to achieve the short-term objectives that move the organization from its starting point towards achieving its long-term goals. Strategy plays a vital role in VUCA strategic planning. It bridges the “gap” between where the organization is today and where it wants to be in the future.
  • Strategy Decision – Once formulated, leaders must then decide if the strategy is the best one to help the organization achieve its long-term goals. If the decision is to move ahead with executing a chosen strategy then it is time to commit, and proceed with creating a complete Strategic Plan around that strategy designed to ensure successful execution.

The strategic planning process culminates in the creation of a VUCA Strategic Plan:

  • VUCA Strategic Plan – A clear time and resource based plan, that details the strategy and actions by which the organization intends to reach its Envisioned Future.

In addition to their primary VUCA Strategic Plan, leadership teams should also take several additional steps to help mitigate the potential risk of disruption or failure:

  • Scenario Planning – Identify the potential VUCA impacts that could derail your primary strategy or impede your ability to achieve the defined objectives, and action plan your response to them. Because almost no plan goes as expected, by answering “what if” across a comprehensive set of possible future scenarios your team will be better prepared to quickly react and make decisions when a disruption happens.
  • Strategy Portfolio – A list of viable alternative, complementary, or even competing strategies that your organization will resource and your team will execute in addition to the primary strategy. Your Strategy Portfolio will develop from the strategy formulation phase, additional insights gained from situational awareness, and scenario planning that went into creating your VUCA Plan. This element mitigates risk and maximizes future opportunity for the organization.

In the final stage of the VUCA strategic planning process the focus shifts from planning to execution. It is now time for leaders to delegate the responsibility for taking action and manage the outcomes.

  • Management Cycle – A circular workflow, where individuals or teams do the work of executing the strategic plan, review progress, and make course-correction decisions. The leaders of the organization manage this on a regular cadence until the objectives are either achieved, changed, or deleted.

Conclusion – Time to Execute

“Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless.” – Morris Chang

In the world of business, having great ideas is much like having a strategic plan – many leaders and organizations have them, yet very few successfully get them done.

This failure to execute is what the Management Cycle element of the VUCA Strategic Planning framework prevents. By clearly defining expectations and ownership, and actively managing the work, leaders can make sure good outcomes happen.

Moving the organization from vision to results…

-Onward