Bridge between Strategy and Operations

Success of a business requires two major attributes—how relevant and focused the business strategy is and how effective the business operations are. In an organization, people perceive that strategy is at the highest management level while operation is at the floor level. For implementing it, the strategy has to be converted into operations. There may be a disconnect between the strategy and operations, which will eventually lead to poor implementation.

This is experienced by many organizations. On the other hand, there are organizations, which are effectively working on strategy and operations issues, and have transformed themselves into value-driven growing organizations.

This article explores the basic premise of strategy and operations in an organizational perspective. The article brings out the importance of the linkage between strategy and operations, in achieving the organizational goal. It also shows how Project Management can be the bridge between strategy and operations and explains how Project Management is the language of implementation.

Vision without doing is merely a dream
Action without vision is just passing the time

Vision with action can change the world
-- Joel Barker, “ Mr. Paradigm”4

1          Introduction

Success of a business requires two major attributes viz. how relevant and focused the business strategy is and how effective the business operations are. In an organization, people perceive that strategy is at the highest management level, while operation is at the floor level. For implementing it, the strategy has to be converted into operations. There may be disconnect in between the strategy and operations, which will eventually lead to poor implementation.

This is experienced by many organizations. On the other hand, there are organizations, which are effectively working on strategy and operation issues and have transformed themselves into value driven growing organizations.

This article explores the basic premise of strategy and operation in an organizational perspective. The article brings out the importance of the linkage between strategy and operations, in achieving the organizational goal. It also shows how Project Management can be the bridge between strategy and operations and covers that Project Management is the language of implementation.

2          Relevance of Strategy and Operations

2.1       Strategy is the journey to Goals

What is then strategy all about? Strategy is the master plan that reflects the organization’s vision, mission, and objectives. It is the term for the collective and actionable steps to implement operating programs and achieve goals.

In fact, goals are destinations and not the journey. Strategy is the journey. Goal can be as expression of what the organization aspires. For example, a company may have a strategy aimed at positioning itself as a market leader.

The company can set about to achieve this strategic objective by improving product marketability, offering superior variety, quality, best prices, unmatched warranties and unmatched customer service. These are the components of the market leader strategy. This will lead to define the strategy in specific terms.



2.2       Operations make results happen

What does ‘operation’ mean? ‘Operation’ means transforming a set of inputs in to desired set of outputs. This transforming is through a definitive processes. The process starts with the concept of operations. It finds out the validation whether strategy is complete, accurate and effective for the intended purpose. The inputs are generally the resources.

The operating activities will depend on the desired outputs and the available resources to deliver those outputs. That means a process of synchronization of activities should be in place.

It is important that, at the planning stage, a forecasting is done with reasonable reliability, on the execution process to achieve the desired outputs.