An effective top-down structure ensures successful follow through for your strategic plan by assigning tasks to employees with the appropriate abilities and authority.
Launching your strategic plan is critical for your business’ success and getting your company’s executive team involved is essential for successful strategy execution. An effective top-down structure ensures successful follow through for your strategic plan by assigning tasks to employees with the appropriate abilities and authority. It also prevents executives from being overwhelmed with minute details. Both of these issues can result in a serious loss of money and time and can ultimately undermine your strategy’s success.
There are three key phases to consider when launching a strategic plan from the top down.
- The Executive Team should be in charge of planning. The executive team develops the overall strategy for your business and decides which tasks will be assigned to which groups or departments to ensure successful execution. The executive team should be in charge of developing the overall plan but shouldn’t be weighed down with every single detail of its execution. This should be left to management and individual team members.
- The management team should be responsible for managing. This may seem obvious, but managers should be allowed to effectively monitor and lead their teams, while executives shouldn’t be pulled into filling this role. These managers are in charge of coordinating the day-to-day activities that are essential in transforming your strategy from an abstract goal into actual deliverables.
- The entire team is responsible for reporting. Each person or group should track the metrics for which they’re accountable. By delegating these reporting tasks, you free up executives and management to compile smaller data sets into large-scale reports. Executives can then adjust an organization’s strategy accordingly. Some organizations group teams into strategy teams to ensure clear accountability and reporting.
When combined, these three phases translate into executing toward a clear, common set of goals. With these clearly defined responsibilities and goals, you can guarantee that your company is working to deliver on its strategy in the most effective manner possible.
Mike Bell
Mike has dedicated his professional and personal life to seeking out challenges – traveling to the edge of his comfort zone and then pushing a bit further. He’s a serial entrepreneur, combining his thirst for adventure with his drive for doing work that matters. Mike is a recognized expert in local government strategic planning, performance management, and comparative benchmarking.
Mike’s passion for public service drives him and his team to build more efficient, transparent, and trusted public sector agencies. As ‘private sector public servants’ the Envisio team helps to align the work of governments with the needs of their communities by activating strategic plans, engaging employees, measuring performance, and reporting on results.
Mike is father to three girls and an avid skier, golfer, badminton, player and photographer.
