Virtual Roundtable – Summary of Discussion on Successful Strategy Execution

The aim of the Beyond Default Roundtable discussions is to give practitioners in strategy and change an opportunity to share their experiences, challenge conventional wisdom, brainstorm ideas and network with peers who share the same interests and challenges. The discussion was led by David Trafford, co-author of Beyond Default and moderated by Chris Hallam, founder of CH Coaching Solutions. As the Roundtable followed …

Core ideas behind the Beyond Default approach to developing strategy and delivering change

Beyond Default offers a different and innovative approach to developing strategy and delivering change. The approach is based upon a set of core ideas that collectively present a point of view on this important topic. These 20 core ideas are: The context within which an organisation operates is often more powerful than the strategies and resources that its leaders deploy …

Insight into how effective organisations are at developing strategy and delivering change

During a recent webinar participants were asked to give their assessment on how effective they thought their organisations were at developing strategy and delivering change. They were asked six questions to which they responded in a live poll. The results were both interesting and concerning. Interesting as they concurred with the answers I’d got many times before when asking similar …

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 …

How Operating Principles Can Make Strategy Meaningful

Peter Boggis and David Trafford argue that the purpose of any strategy is to change an organisation’s trajectory, away from its current default future to one that is judged to be better. Unfortunately most strategies are too complicated, too detailed or too vague to be meaningful to the people who are expected to implement them. They lack a meaningful set …

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 …

Succeeding at Corporate Transformation

In this webinar David Trafford and Peter Boggis discuss why corporate transformation remains such a challenge for many organisations, and what leaders can do to increase the chances for success. Corporate history is littered with examples of organisations that were unable to transform and, as a result, are no longer with us. Examples include General Foods (1990), Pan American World …

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 …