Measuring Your Business Strategy’s Success
Once a company has established its strategy one pager and the structure for how it is to be executed, it is important to track the success of it. But how do you track the success? There are several things companies can do, but this article will focus on 4 items:
First: Revisit Goals and Objectives at the micro level. If for example your procurement department has a goal of converting 80% of requisitions received into purchase orders within three business days. This is a trackable goal and thus by reviewing how long it is taking to convert requisitions into purchase, you can see if this goal is being met.
Second: This ties into the first point, but managers need to supervise the reporting/tracking systems. Thus, from our first example, managers would be monitoring the purchasing software to ensure the goals are met.
Third: Employee surveys/talk to the employees. Often times management will hear employees say, “Management is out of touch.” Or, “Management established these goals or procedures, etc. without employee feedback and they wonder why things aren’t working well.” Management eliminates this by encouraging feedback, by encouraging their employees to showoff entrepreneurial skills. This creates buy-in. Buy-in is organic and ineffable thus not really visible in terms of numbers, but visible in the company work culture.
Fourth: Optional all hands monthly meetings. This may be difficult for large companies with multiple campuses, but there is a solution: video conference. The point of this is to cover general employee news like retirements, anniversaries, etc. But more importantly provide monthly updates on the company’s path to success. Highlight what has been accomplished, provide a brief overview of upcoming projects, and lastly allow/encourage open discussion and questions amongst employees. This is somewhat similar to item three but less formal. It helps drive inclusitivioty and allows employees to see the impact they are making on the company.
Finally, while there are more things a company can do these four things are fairly easy and will have a massive impact on company culture. And while there is more to discuss about strategy one pagers, next week’s post will be about procurement basics.
