Companies fail to achieve strategic goals for a variety of reasons. They include a lack of understanding by the workforce of the strategy, an executive team that spends little time addressing strategy, and a lack of resources devoted to pursuing strategy. Poor outcomes can be avoided, however, by creating and pursuing a disciplined policy deployment process that is understood and followed by the entire workforce.

Creating an effective policy deployment process was the topic of a recent Webinar led by Bob Dean, co-founder of TBM Consulting Group. His first words of advice: Know the difference between a strategic plan and strategy deployment. The strategic plan, he explained, is the three- to five-year vision of where you want an organization to be. Strategy deployment, on the other hand, is the one-year plan or process instituted to break down that vision into short-term goals that can be assigned, measured, provided with resources, and revisited to determine progress.

Dean's entire presentation is available online at Planning an Effective Policy Deployment Process. It is one of several presentations that comprise IndustryWeek's Operational Excellence Online Conference.

That said, several audience members presented questions to Dean at the conclusion of the event. A few of those questions -- as well as Dean's answers -- are presented here:

Q: How do you determine the right amount of breakthrough and kaizen so you don't overwhelm any one department?

A: The annual improvement priorities.... generally four to six improvement priorities are what we would find in most organizations. Very few would have more than that and when you get eight, 10, 12 improvement priorities you begin to dilute resources and you begin to dilute where we need to go. How you accomplish breakthrough is very focused, critical few improvement priorities.

Q: In the early years of policy deployment is it best to stick to hard and fast rules rather than getting creative?

A: I'm chuckling a little bit because hard and fast means being more disciplined and being creative to me means maybe being more undisciplined. It's a delicate balance. In terms of management process I think rules are fairly hard and fast. Management process should be ‘if I'm not hitting red I want a team to report out on why they're not hitting red and I want them to show data that supports why they're working on the things that they're working on…but being creative about maybe the different tools that we use and how we use the tools …you can be creative about how you problem solve, using data obviously…but the management process, by being hard and fast…that is something I wouldn't want an organization to be creative about. That leads to ineffective results.

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