Strategy – Its all in the sauce
Guest post from Travis Anderson
According to Jack Welch, strategy is very straightforward in life. On page 165 of Winning, he says, “You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” And again on page 167 he says, “Strategy, then, is simply finding the big aha and setting a broad direction, putting the right people behind it, and then executing with an unyielding emphasis on continual improvement.”
So much of what we do as project managers is to make winners out of our people on projects.
To be on time, on schedule, and within scope would define a winning project.
Is Mr. Welch correct with his philosophy “Its all in the sauce”?
Can strategy be that simple?
Tell us about your experiences with strategy and tactics on your projects.
Sep 28th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Jack’s statement is very broad and perhaps a bit too simplistic. I read this book a few years ago so my memory of specifics will probably fail…
“simply finding the big aha” – it seems to me like this is a big component of strategy, and this statement assumes it’s so easy that companies will obviously know it, perhaps intuitively? A lot of institutions thought that mortgage-backed securities were the “big aha”….
I like the part about having the right people and continuous improvement. What I think Jack is missing in this statement is structuring a system of incentives within the organization that guide everyone towards the execution of strategy. Perhaps he discusses incentives in the rest of the book, I don’t remember.
So many organizations I see spend a lot of time and money on “strategic planning” and then implement things like contests in a call center where teams compete and locations compete, usually on one-factor metrics like average call time. The amount of negative side-effects that come from things like this are proof to me that no one was thinking strategically about incentives.
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Travis Anderson Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Josh,
My son said something the other day that made me laugh. He said, “Eureka, I invented the word Eureka.” Is that how the big aha comes about? Also, in terms of strategy, what are some of your best strategies for obtaining the right people and continuous improvement? Or is this more a question of tactic?
One last thing, how do you view the relationship between strategy and tactic on projects?
Pick the best context that suits your experience. I am interested to read your response.
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Josh Nankivel Reply:
September 29th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Like Bill I think we may not agree on the definitions of strategy, but what the heck, here’s my take.
Strategy involves the decision and commitment to an approach, focus, and/or guiding principle.
Tactics are the planning & execution on the ground, and they may or may not be in line with strategy.
Incentives are big to me. I don’t just mean monetary incentives. Everything that could possibly motivate individuals, teams, departments, etc. in an organization involves incentives.
Deciding on and committing to using the role of incentives as a guiding principle is a strategy. Ensuring projects, processes, and every facet of organizational structure use this guiding principle is the tactical aspect.
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Sep 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I’ll quote my friend Vic Rosenberg, “I avidly avoid using the term strategy because it causes arguments. And the problem is not that others are wrong as much as that everyone disagrees and all think they are right — which would make my definition just additional Balkanization.”
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Travis Anderson Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Bill,
Strategy is definitely a term that generates broad discussions. I tend to think that on projects, we often are more tactical than strategic. Can you elaborate on the tactical aspect of projects? You can select a context most suitable to your experience to explains tactic in relation to project management.
I am interested to read your response.
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Bill Duncan Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I appreciate your interest in my thoughts, but I follow Vic’s lead on this one. I don’t think a discussion of tactics vs. strategy is useful in the absence of agreed definitions, and I don’t think there is any chance we will get agreement on the definitions.
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