There are many things that annoy me in the world of work, but a particular bugbear of mine, which I\u2019m sure happens in many organisations, is that when discussing the progress of various initiatives, the Centre\u2019s \u2018strategic role\u2019 is positioned as more critical and important that the satellites\u2019 \u2018operational\u2019 one. The inference is that \u2018operational teams\u2019 should be ready in waiting to move in response to the strategist\u2019s vision. I find this stance particularly problematic given that most of the operationalising I concoct and conduct is very much considered, aligned and cognoscente of strategy. \u00a0Anyway, \u00a0me being me, my \u201cstrategic vs. operational\u201d radar is always turned on and ready to detect any incidence of occurrence within the context of meetings, zooms and email exchanges.\u00a0 (By the way, this radar draws on the same power source as my feminism\/patriarchy radar. Both systems are highly reliable, exceptionally accurate and very sensitive \ud83d\ude0a).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I have spent a lot of time teaching organisations of the importance of Strategy and Strategic Deployment. Particularly Strategy Deployment led by Purpose, taking time to share how powerful a unifier Purpose can be. Organising and aligning around purpose provides clarity of direction and incites innovation. It identifies the work that you should not be doing but critically, it promotes where improvement within current operations is required. I\u2019ve talked for probably months on end about how this Purpose can be translated and cascaded<\/strong> across the whole organisation, how it should be aligned to customer value and measures which help organisations to determine where they are, where they want to be and how healthy and in-shape they are in terms of being able to get there. When organisations take the time and trouble to define their purpose and the things that matter to them, when they communicate, communicate, communicate<\/em> these, translate and cascade them so they are meaningful to different departments and levels, and when the organisation itself actually lives and breathe this purpose, it\u2019s a tremendously powerful and productive force. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n But strategy without operations is just a pipe dream.\u00a0 Worse still, it\u2019s the opportunity to frustrate, to disappoint, to disenchant the people that work for you.\u00a0 Strategy without Operations means nothing happens, nothing is achieved. It means no value is delivered. \u00a0Strategy and Operations shouldn\u2019t be a hierarchical relationship, it should be a cooperative one. Co-produced, co-delivered, with equal respect and yes, equal power.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The trouble is, strategy feels better. Strategy is what you do as you progress in your career, it\u2019s when you leave behind the hot ears and skull dimpling headset of the customer contact centre and you move to the corridors of power for some privacy and headspace because of all of that thinking that you suddenly need to start doing. \u00a0It\u2019s when you are now able to \u2018work from home\u2019 because you have an important policy document to write. (Thank God for the pandemic for finally bursting the \u2018only senior people can be trusted to work from home\u2019 myth at least). \u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In fact, the pandemic has brought the essential nature of operations into sharp focus for the first time in a long time.\u00a0 Yes, the most important workers in our society are not strategists or business consultants \u2026 our keyworkers work in supermarkets, deliver parcels and pick up our bins, they\u2019re in our hospitals and in our schools, caring for us and teaching our children.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Indeed, the biggest challenges of our times are now operational ones. How do we process a test as fast as we can and inform those concerned as quickly as possible? How can we make enough vaccines, procure enough vaccines and get everyone vaccinated as quickly and as effectively as we can?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Of course, strategy will be a key catalyst in the success of these initiatives but be under no illusion that achievement of these strategic goals is VERY much an operational challenge<\/strong>. It\u2019s about demand, it\u2019s about capacity, it\u2019s about logistics, its about equipment, it\u2019s about PROCESS<\/strong>. Of course it\u2019s about money too, but money will always only get you so far.\u00a0 There sure has been a lot of money spent in this pandemic which hasn\u2019t led to huge leaps in operational efficiency or <\/em><\/strong>effectiveness.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Effective operations can move mountains, its life and death, the difference between thriving and surviving and I hope that we take this newfound respect for the importance of operations (well I suppose I haven\u2019t really tested whether society has become enlightened to their importance yet… if the pandemic doesn\u2019t achieve it then I suppose we will be doomed forever) within the world of work.\u00a0
From my perspective at least, it\u2019s one thing to have a vision about what\u2019s possible, it\u2019s easy to issue a call to action – the trouble is ALWAYS<\/strong>, how do we make that vision become a reality? \u00a0There needs to be an investment (mental, emotional, often financial but mostly just cooperative effort) in terms of how we operationalise <\/strong>these strategic aims. More than this, an awareness that the key part of an excellent strategist\u2019s role, is to collaborate with operations, listen to their expertise and provide them with what they need<\/strong> to make the strategic vision become a reality. Strategy is not a dictatorial command, it\u2019s a collaborative conversation that seeks to achieve things, together.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are many things that annoy me in the world of work, but a particular bugbear of mine, which I\u2019m sure happens in many organisations, is that when discussing the […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-operations","category-strategy","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2021\/01\/bees.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}