The "Blendification" of Your Organization's Culture, Strategy, and Execution

Early in June, Dan Bruder published an exciting new book entitled, The Blendification System: Activating Potential by Connecting Culture, Strategy, and Execution. By focusing on the unifying purpose within each organization, this book promotes alignment between leadership and employees setting a clear, strong foundation in which every individual can thrive.

During a recent conversation with Dan, I asked him a series of questions about the book and the connection between employees, customers, and communities. Here are the important questions followed by Dan's answers:

“What is the connection between culture, strategy, and execution and why are most companies not embracing it?”

Companies are at the forefront of fostering growth within society and communities. In the US, adults spend over 50% of their waking time in work- or work-related activities.  Work is where people come together on a regular basis with the primary purpose of identifying and satisfying society’s needs.  For companies to realize their potential, they must break away from the model of oversimplification and internal silos. Human beings can accomplish tremendous outcomes when motivated, challenged, and connected.  Unfortunately, business has diminished employee motivation by relegating people to functional silos and meaningless task-oriented behaviors.

"Why aren’t companies embracing the connection between culture, strategy, and execution?"

There are three primary components that are critical for organizations to realize their potential.  They are culture, strategy, and execution.  Historically, there has been little intentionality around designing an exceptional culture while strategy has been something the executive elite do every year or two and it typically is not cascaded through the organization.  Similarly, execution has not been embedded in the culture or aligned with the strategy and employees do not see how their jobs make a difference. Generally, there has been little focus on deliberately designing culture, strategy, and execution as a connected system where each complement and complete the other.  This is primarily related to executive leaders and founders not fully grasping the potential of a united team and their ability to truly make a difference.  Essentially, it is easier to pursue profit than potential.

"Why should companies embrace the connection between culture, strategy, and execution?"

Culture, strategy, and execution are seamlessly designed and implemented together in The Blendification® System.   When these three business components are purposefully created and connected, companies experience substantial growth in engagement, innovation, and outcomes.  As the entire company aligns on a common cultural cause, the strategic platform becomes the path for employees to realize their human potential.  Finally, the execution of the strategic platform enables employees to align their work with making a positive impact on their communities.  Thus, the systematic blending of culture, strategy, and execution enables companies to be at the forefront of advancing society through their employees, customers, and communities.

What do you think of Dan's ideas? Does your company suffer from disconnects among the culture, strategy, and execution platform? 

Using Measurement and Metrics in the Hoshin Planning Process

Much has been written on the effectiveness of Hoshin Kanri (also known as Hoshin Planning or policy deployment), which is a method for ensuring that the strategic goals of a company drive progress and action at every level within that company, and the power of a shared strategic vision. This past March, Lisa Boisvert published an interesting new book -- Reflections on Hoshin Planning: Guidance for Leaders and Practitioners -- that examines Hoshin Planning through the ever-shifting and imperfect lens of daily life in organizations. I recently asked her: "How do C-suite and executive leaders currently use measurement and metrics in the Hoshin Planning process?" Here is her complete answer:

In Hoshin Planning, the purposes of measurement and metrics in executive discussions on the strategic plan are at least threefold. We measure to agree on an objective definition of a desired end state; build understanding around an area that is new to the organization—a breakthrough; and ensure that our strategic choices and related activities are meeting the organization’s business objectives. Including metrics as part of the dialogue in these three areas is essential to getting high quality consensus among the organization’s leaders, a consensus that gets results when the plan is implemented across the rest of the organization.

• Building a shared, objective definition of a desired end state. The evidence of a consensus decision is that once it is made, everyone who participated in making the decision begins to behave consistent with the spirit of that decision. The results of a Hoshin plan are influenced by whether consensus is achieved along the course of its selection and implementation. One means for arriving at consensus is the dialogue that takes place to create an objective (measurable) definition of success.

• Leaning out, learning how to measure what the organization hasn’t done before. If the Hoshin is a bona fide breakthrough, it’s likely to involve the application of designs and processes that are unprecedented for the organization. As a result, the organization’s ability to measure performance may be limited at first. Leadership focus, and openness to learning what monitoring metrics give the best indicator of business success as the Hoshin work advances, helps keep plans real and improves results.

• Integrating Hoshin metrics with business fundamentals. Hoshin Planning aficionados sometimes take some teasing for being overly fond of fancy matrices, but some way of showing how all the measurable goals and activities of the organization are related is essential. Senior leaders need to create a visual that shows how their business, Hoshin, and operational goals impact and support each other.

Has Hoshin planning been successful in your organization? Has flexibility been a problem?