Implementing the Strategy Pyramid

When it comes to successful business planning, using a strategy pyramid has become a prominent fixture for small businesses that need another method of architecting a methodology that will work for their culture. Companies have long sought consultants and business coaches to come in and guide them through the process of planning. The problem was, those coaches did not remain through the implementation to see if companies actually put to practice, the plans that they had made. Additionally, companies struggled with effectiveness in fulfilling their objectives because of the disconnection between the plans the executives made and the actions the rank and file performed on a daily basis.

The strategy pyramid was created as a sort of guidepost to help companies with better follow through or what we now called strategic execution. The pyramid is broken down into three sections, programs, tactics, and the overall strategy. For many companies, the big idea is not where they struggle. They know where they want to go. They struggle with constructing the necessary actions of how to get there. One of the things that led to Carly Fiorina's departure at Hewlett-Packard was not her vision. It was her ability to actionize that vision and to see it executed by the technology bear.

Today, everything that Carly was trying to bring to bear at HP is being accomplished through another executive who is better at execution than Carly was or is. The fact that HP is executing her vision goes to reestablishing her credibility. At the same time, it shows how integral having a strategy pyramid would have been for her and her team as well as for small businesses looking for a practice guide for bringing vision into reality.

When Fiorina was hired away from AT&T spin-off, Lucent Technologies, the move was lauded. She was the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 company in US history. With a successful career, Carly Fiorina had established herself as a titan of management and vision and ideas. Once a rank and file employee, Carly rose through the ranks to become the #2 person before leaving to try to recapture HP's magic as one of the premiere technology companies in the valley. After setting the direction for Lucent, Fiorina began the struggle of pushing HP's direction from a pure printer company to a broader hardware and service company that could compete with IBM and Dell. Her problem arose not in her strategy, the top of the strategic pyramid, but in the bottom two sections, tactics and programs.

When it comes to tactics or what you want to communicate and the channels you choose to communicate the message focus of a company, it is as important how you communicate as what you communicate. Carly's problem was not her content but her delivery. And that's a problem many of us face. Even in the small business marketplace, telling someone what we can do is not as difficult as telling them how we are going to do it. Delivery is another name for tactics. Carly's ability to deliver was hampered by her inability to program well.

Programming in the workplace is the practical approach of how you are going to do what you said. It is a measurable methodology to completing or fulfilling the vision. When HP acquired Compaq, the question was not if it could be done. The question was how the merger would transpire. When Fiorina said HP needed to focus on services a similar question arose as analysts questioned HP's ability to reinvent itself even more than it already had. And without distinct, specific programs in place, vision is left in the clouds while workers are left to figure out the how's and the whys which leaves them trying to perform tasks they are neither equipped or enabled to perform.

The process of programming begins with a central question. What is it going to take for your business to deliver what you said? The answer to that question will determine the elements necessary to construct the programs you need to undertake to build the vision you set out towards. After answering that question, specific objectives must be developed in order to break the big picture down into smaller, more developed ideals. Beyond that, every objective must go through a process of discovery and development to see what actions or operations must be undertaken in order for that objective to be accomplished. When that is done, the pyramid is working successfully.

From an operations standpoint, a company's ability to succeed is based on its ability to operate towards the intended end. An execution-driven company is wildly more successful than one that is simply vision-driven. Today, HP is an execution-driven organization more than the vision-oriented one it was under Carly Fiorina's watch.