What is a strategy operating system?

You’ve been working hard to define your organization’s strategy – goals, activities, and allocating the right resources. However, when it comes to implementation and execution, you somehow fall short.

Perhaps you were unrealistic in defining your strategy, you haven’t properly understood the best way to leverage your current position, or… maybe your company’s infrastructure isn’t quite where it needs to be – yet.

Introducing the strategy operating system (OS).

A strategy operating system is a framework that is used for making decisions, implementing your strategy plans, and learning from each cycle or activity for the future. This framework (system) is how you create, align, execute, and adapt strategy in real time.

It combines three key ideas: clarity, context, and coordinated execution. Seeing strategy as an operating system, rather than a static approach, means you will build an architecture that not only drives decisions and aligns business functions around a shared goal, but also enables you to create value both within your organization and for your customers or clients.

Implementing a strategy OS can also support you in scaling your business processes as you grow. Having a strong understanding of how your business functions on the broader (macro) level allows you to organize these processes into different areas and optimize each area as required (micro level).

The current state of strategy

Many organizations struggle with strategy execution due to two common issues: communication and alignment. This could be either between individuals in teams, different departments, or across various seniority levels.

These issues arise when each business function has rigid processes and specific systems to track projects and important information – meaning strategy updates are often fragmented and hard to find by those leading the execution. Using different systems, such as Excel or PowerPoint, also introduces the likelihood that information isn’t always the most up-to-date version, causing individuals’ strategy-focused work to be inaccurate.

If teams are working from the wrong (or outdated) information, this complicates strategic alignment. For a strategy to be successful, everyone involved must be striving towards the same goal. Picture this, you have a heavy block that needs moving and there are six people to do it. One person alone cannot move the block, but the combined strength of all six people should be able to. In order for the block to move, everybody must use their strength simultaneously. And strategy is no different.

Why is a strategy operating system important?

A strategy operating system moves strategy from static – where it is implemented but rarely or never optimized – to dynamic by building on long-term behaviors and previous learnings. The most successful strategies are not one-off exercises, but rather a methodology; a way of doing. Success comes from regular reviews and adjustments to ensure positive progress is being made.

Implementing an OS also makes strategy execution a shared responsibility by removing department siloes, reducing issues in communication. It brings all information surrounding the strategy into one place rather than working with fragmented systems and old data. This helps with ensuring that stakeholders understand the connection with strategy activities and the bigger picture.

How to implement a strategy operating system

Building and implementing a strategy operating system may not be as much of a feat as originally thought – it’s possible parts of the OS are already embedded into your company culture. These processes may need refinement to improve efficiency, rather than being entirely replaced.

A strategy OS is more than just a plan. It underpins all projects and activities that contribute to you achieving your goals. And involves three key principles:

Clear focus

Having a clear focus of where you are currently, where you want to be, what processes you already have in place, and what needs to completely change or be optimized to improve efficiency will form the foundation of how to implement your strategy OS. This will also help you and other stakeholders to understand what matters most and where you need to prioritize your efforts.

However, the focus doesn’t end here. You need to hold that focus, that clarity, throughout your strategy execution. There are frameworks and tools you can use to create and maintain focus – such as OKRs – which help with connecting strategy to execution, as well as encouraging internal behaviors towards tracking, reflecting, and time or resource allocation throughout the entire process.

Cadence

Regular cadence (weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually) for reviewing progress will move both your strategy and OS implementation from static to dynamic. These set intervals will help you to form a habit of reviewing your processes and making adjustments before they cause additional issues – or are too ingrained within your company to fix.

Commentary

Commentary or feedback loops allow you to gather information from various business functions and processes that will guide implementation. However, it’s important that you have multiple methods of obtaining feedback in place so that your data is rich and diverse. This includes looking at customer feedback, sales cycles, product, operations, and other business functions. Commentary from various channels means that you won’t be focusing only on one specific aspect, but rather the broader situation.

Once you’ve collected your data, you can then use this to formulate actions for the future – whether that’s just for your operating system or overarching business strategy.

Next steps

As with any large-scale business activity, understanding how your strategy operating system may look and logistics around implementation won’t happen immediately. It will take time, trial, and effort to highlight areas for change and new processes to introduce.

Viewing strategy as a system, and embedding this within your internal culture, will help you to move from static plans that soon become outdated to building a sustainable and scalable way of working. A strategy OS creates the structure that supports alignment of processes and people, and reduces issues with internal communication. If people truly understand the ultimate goal and the role they play, you will have more buy-in to support your efforts. If everyone believes in the goals you set out, and can see smaller activities having a positive impact, implementing both your OS will feel like a natural progression – that will equally benefit your overarching business strategy.