Should Strategies be Implemented or Operationalised, and what’s the Difference?

While there are many approaches to executing strategy they are all based upon two fundamentally different philosophies. One is where an organisation is ‘pushed’ to its target future. The other is where it is ‘pulled’. Which approach an organisation applies can determine how successful it is in turning strategic intent into operational reality. The ‘push’ approach is usually called implementation. …

Operationalising Strategy – Turning Strategic Intent into Operational Reality

David Trafford and Peter Boggis argue that there is often more to operationalising strategy than making structural changes, redesigning processes and training staff. For strategies to be truly successful, leaders need to create the conditions that enable the organisation to pull itself into an improved future – a future that not only reflects the strategic intent, but also becomes operational …

Using Organisational Capabilities to Pull the Present into the Future

David Trafford and Peter Boggis argue that organisational capabilities have an important role to play when developing strategy or implementing change. They discuss how existing organisational capabilities can inhibit change by anchoring an organisation to its current trajectory – thereby taking it to its default future – and that new organisational capabilities are needed if an organisation is to have …

Setting Your Organisation on a Trajectory to an Improved Future

In this webinar David Trafford and Peter Boggis discuss the background to their book Beyond Default – Setting Your Organisation on a Trajectory to an Improved Future. They also discuss some of the book’s key ideas and case studies. Beyond Default is the result of a collaboration between David and Peter, who have worked together for over 25 years. During …

Strategy should be operationalised not implemented

In this short video David Trafford and Peter Boggis discuss different approaches to executing strategy. Their view is that in the majority of cases strategy is implemented. This is when the organisation is pushed onto its target trajectory through the execution of a series of pre-planned tasks. This push approach assumes that organisations are deterministic and programmable, but we all …

Operating principles make strategic intent meaningful

In this short video David Trafford and Peter Boggis discuss the need to make strategic intent more meaningful to others. While strategies may be understood by those who developed them, they are often perceived as being too complicated, too detailed or too vague to the people expected to implement them. They often lack meaningful definitions of how things should operate …