Every year, I meet with hundreds of business leaders from all around the world and I always ask them this key question: “Where are you getting stuck? Is it strategy creation or strategy execution?” Overwhelmingly, they tell me that strategy execution is their biggest issue. Executing strategy within one company is hard enough, but the complexities increase exponentially across multiple companies, partners and customers.
In order to manage all of this complexity, leaders need a way to visualize the steps and activities all of the teams and individuals need to accomplish, and they could really use a roadmap to guide them from where they are to their destination—a digitized roadmap, of course. A digitized roadmap could guide individuals, teams and partners through processes, set expectations about next steps, and change dynamically in real-time—much like car navigation does when it alerts you to slow traffic or reroutes you when you take a wrong turn.
This idea led me to create a Guided Journey™ platform as the foundation for our solutions. This platform goes far beyond merely tracking activities and tasks needed to complete a process. Processes are fine, but businesses are not static entities. Conditions change constantly, and when they do, the processes you had decided upon two weeks ago will no longer get you to your destination. You need to be rerouted, and a digitized journey can do that.
A strategy is not implemented by just one person or even by one persona. Each individual, whether they are a team member, partner, or customer has their part to play. The Guided Journey provides them each with GPS-like directions for the steps they need to take to complete their part of the journey.
A Guided Journey platform also provides the right information to the right people at the right time. For example, instead of an individual logging in to the accounting system to find an invoice from 2019—the Guided Journey knows he or she will need that information, is connected to the accounting system, and provides it to them automatically at the moment they require it.
One of the key factors in the successful execution of complex strategies is accountability. Leaders need to see where everyone is on their journeys, much in the same way you can track your family or friends on your smart phone or through a shared Uber excursion.
Leaders also need actionable intelligence so they can make better decisions, so we overlay business data and process data as part of the journey. This enables leaders to gauge the impact their strategies are having on the business and make adjustments as necessary.
Everyone involved in executing a strategy—individuals, teams, partners, leaders and even customers—need to know what they need to do, why they are doing it, and how to get it done, a Guided Journey platform enables more effective execution throughout the process.