If a strategy is to remain relevant to the changing business environment and continue to deliver benefits all changes must be governed for compliance and the results from changes need to be measured with metrics that link to the strategy’s promised benefits. This practical evidence based approach will strengthen compliance and justify the stakeholders’ investment.
Governing compliance
Following communication of the strategy roll-out each member of the workforce should have an understanding of how the strategy affects them and what they are contributing to deliver its benefits. Communication packs and tools will be available for them to refer to when making decisions and they will understand which decision domains may require referral to governance bodies for advice and approval and which allow them a free hand when designing and implementing a change. Training materials should be made available to ensure this understanding.
Change governance will likely already be in place and this will include a responsibility for reviewing and ensuring that proposed changes are compliant with the strategy. There are several models for implementing the governance of strategy compliance:
- Autonomous - each team that delivers change is responsible for the strategic compliance of their changes.
- Federated - each functional domain within the business, e.g. finance, has a governance body that approves change and is responsible for the strategic compliance of these.
- Centralised - a team of specialists (e.g. enterprise architects) are specifically responsible for the strategic compliance of all changes which are referred for review and approval by each team that delivers change in the organisation. This is a separate approval step specifically concerned with strategic compliance and a central function to manage that.
Monitoring delivery and maintaining relevance
Delivery against the strategy plan should be reported at least quarterly to all stakeholders according to a RACI matrix which sets out stakeholders’ roles based on Responsible/Accountable/Consulted/Informed criteria. A subset of stakeholders should form a strategy delivery board, meeting regularly to review progress and provide evidence that the latest changes are compliant with the strategy. A log should be kept of changes and their status with respect to strategic compliance. It is also this board to which the exception process will escalate decisions that propose to diverge from the strategy. Such divergence may be acceptable for pragmatic reasons or emerging circumstances but they must provoke a review to ascertain whether the strategy needs to be changed. Any proposal to diverge from the strategy must have an impact assessment including changes to costs and timescales relating to delivering the strategy. A plan must be presented for bringing the change into strategic alignment in future. The plan may or may not be enacted but this planning allows that decision to be a fully informed one.