quest strategy execution

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strategyexecution

Executing your strategy and delivering results

Steve SmithPaul Ward

i

ContentsIntroduction 1

The Strategy Execution Formula 2

Strategy 3

• Focus 4

• Balance 5

• Stretch 7

• LeadingStrategy 9

Execution 10

• Alignment 11

• Engagement 12

• Discipline 13

• LeadingExecution 15

SustainedResults 16

The Strategy Execution Cycle 18

HowgoodisyourStrategyExecution? 20

Appendix 23

1

1 Source: Quest Worldwide global survey

Introduction“80% of executives are satisfied with their strategy yet only

14% are satisfied with the execution of the strategy.”1

Something is very wrong here. What is the point of an elaborate strategic plan if you cannot put it into practice and deliver results?

This leader’s guide addresses this common business problem. It outlines how, in practice, strategy can be converted to successful business results. A simple formula will help you remember the key steps: StrategyplusExecutionequalsSustainedResults. This formula is expanded in this booklet to show the practical actions needed to implement a sustained drive for results into the natural rhythm of your business. You will see that your strategy needs Focus, Balance and Stretch before it can be successfully executed. And for execution to deliver sustained results, Alignment, Engagement and Discipline are essential. These are the six critical elements of Strategy Execution and are explained inside.

The principles and practices described in this guide are based on years of experience helping leaders and organisations convert their strategy into success. Each section will highlight how you, as a leader, can make a difference. Effective leadership is required at every stage in strategy execution. At the end of the guide, you will find a self-assessment survey to enable you to identify reasons why strategy execution in your organisation may be less successful than it should be. Apply these six elements well and your strategy execution will be as good as the world’s best.

2

The formula for Strategy Execution:

Strategy + Execution=SustainedResults

+ ExecutionFocus

Balance

Stretch

Alignment

Engagement

Discipline

=SustainedResults

Strategy

² Source: Monitor Analysis quoted by Palladium Group Inc.

Strategy execution is now rated as the top issue by leading executives.² It is worth making the effort to master it. By the way, strategy execution cannot be left to a strategy director or corporate planning department or even delegated down the line. If you are the leader, you have to lead it!

“Execution is not only the biggest issue facing business today; it is something nobody has explained satisfactorily.”

– Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

3

Strategy:Focus, Balance, StretchA thick report of dense analysis is not a strategy. A strategy must be communicable to be useful. Your strategy should impart direction, inspiration and specific guidance of what your organisation needs to do to win. If you can articulate that sense of winning, express it in terms to which people can relate and show how they can contribute to it, you have a communicable strategy.

To help people in your organisation to understand and ultimately feel a sense of co-ownership of the strategy, you will need to show the linkages between the longer- term ambitions and the actions people take today and tomorrow. The diagram shows the logic required to convert your long-term thinking into current actions. The ‘egg-timer’ constriction is important. You need to make sharp informed choices of what is strategic and high priority or people will feel swamped and confused.

To make these hard choices, use the techniques of focus, balance and stretch.

SHAPING3-5 year vision

Winning priorities

‘Vital few’goals

Breakthrough goals

Annual targets and objectives

Projects and actions

DOING

From thinking to doing ... a planning framework

4

Focus

Focus requires a clear Vision of the desired future state. What is your organisation about and how will it stand out and compete in the future? That vision may reflect customer and market drivers, operational excellence, environmental standards and financial performance. Paint a picture of future competitive success and describe it, not in the style of a statement for the annual report but as the future messages and actions of the leaders of the organisation. Think in terms of a three to five year horizon for your vision statement.

Should you have a Mission as well as a vision? Yes, if it helps to unite and inspire people. The mission should support the vision by describing the direction and drive of the organisation in simple, memorable terms. Examples are 3M’s mission “To solve unsolved problems innovatively” or Walt Disney’s “To make people happy”. The mission should have emotional appeal and should encourage a unity of purpose. To contrast vision and mission statements, make the vision a “to be …” statement and the mission a “to do …” statement.

The vision is the relatively easy bit. More gruelling but ultimately rewarding is the definition of goals to support the vision. Many leaders start by shaping big strategic themes or priorities, sometimes using warfare terminology such as Key Battles or Must Win Battles. Within these winning priorities, specific goals must be defined. This takes time, needs good data and structured debate in the top leadership team. Use tools to make disciplined choices, not gut feel or argument. Keep working at it until you have an agreed set of VitalFewGoals. This means a maximum of 15 and ideally much less. Leadership teams which try to achieve 30 or 50 goals (not uncommon) always disappoint themselves.

5

Focus is also about learning to say no. Identify the things to stop doing in order to focus on the vital few. These ‘must stops’ require leaders to let go of their favourite projects, stop wasting valuable resources, and focus their own time only on the chosen goals.

BalanceShort term financial performance, driven by quarterly reports to investment analysts and shareholders, certainly provides focus for today’s business leaders. Yet companies routinely deliver less than they promise – an average of only 63% of the promised financial performance according to one survey.³ The leaders of these companies may have too narrow a focus. Revenue growth, profitability, and return on investment can only be outcomes of a successfully executed strategy. The drivers of these financial outcomes are what we must pin down through the vital few strategic goals. An explicit sense of balance is needed covering a broader spread of stakeholders than shareholders alone. How will we be distinctive in the market? How will we attract and retain good customers? How will we deliver to their needs? How can we make our delivery processes responsive and efficient? How do we develop and motivate talented people to manage those processes?

Without an explicit step to balance the vital few goals, leadership teams exhibit a natural yet flawed bias. For instance, technology-focused teams often create a long list of product and technology goals. More marketing-oriented teams may show a brand development bias. In both cases, goals relating to customer service, process improvement and people development tend to be under-played.³ Source: Marakon Associates

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Start with the standard balanced categories of Our Market, Our

Processes, Our People and Our Performance and assess whether

the chosen focused goals strongly cover each one. Use this

balanced framework to prioritise and refine the goals even further.

There is another check to do to ensure good balance in your

strategy: will the goal statements require leading or lagging

performance indicators when tracked? One example of the

difference is: leading indicator, inventory turn; lagging indicator,

return on assets. Another is: leading, time spent with customers

versus lagging, sales revenue. Dig hard to find the leading indicators

because they trigger earlier action – important for execution.

When thinking about balance, think also about balancing hard and

soft issues in the business. Emphasizing organisational values is

a good way of ensuring the softer elements of business are not

neglected. All organisations work to a set of values which are often

unwritten and may be hidden. The really successful organisations

shape these values to support their strategy. Try and identify around

five positive words or short statements that exemplify how you

would like your customers to describe how they see your business

and performance. Could you live up to these value statements?

Doing so could create a big competitive advantage, so make these

aspirational values form part of your strategy.

So far, we have converted our strategic thinking into a vision

(possibly with a mission), a set of organisational values and a suite

of vital few goals spread across a balanced framework. How does it

look together? Will it fit on one page? If so, you have the basis for a

Balanced Business Strategy. The one page test is a good one. If you

have too many words to fit onto one page, you almost certainly have

too many goals and your wording is not yet succinct enough.

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Stretch

Now our strategy is focused and balanced but what degree of stretch is required? Without stretch, we may well find that achieving it is not enough and the competition has left us behind. First, be sure that all the vital few goals have been converted to SMART goals. SMART means Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Relevant, and Time-bound. Each goal statement must have a specific description, a relevant measure and clearly defined targets. Does each goal and target present a stretching challenge?

Check for sandbagging. Goals should be realistic and achievable yet with targets extended enough to make a difference. Take out any routine goals that offer small improvements. Your vital few goals must stimulate changes, elevating performance from the average to the exceptional, from the mediocre to the excellent, and from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Examples of stretch goals include doubling historical sales growth in one year, reducing order time to delivery by two thirds in five months, reducing employee turnover by 50% in one year. Achieving these types of stretch goals will deliver performance excellence to outpace competitors.

If we now have our 15 or less vital few goals with appropriate levels of stretch on our Balanced Business Strategy, we can consider another stretch challenge. Are any of these capable of truly marking out a unique position? If so these could be our BreakthroughGoals.

A breakthrough goal may be the one big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) proposed by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their business classic, Built to Last. Or you could have one or two breakthrough goals that express a step change in performance and behaviour of the particular process or service.

8

Visionxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx

• xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx

Values

Balanced Business Strategy 2008

Our market Our processes Our people Our performance

xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx

Key projects and tasks to deliver goals

xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx

xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xx

xx%

Outcome Measure Target

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x

xxx

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xx

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Goal Measure TargetGoal Measure Target

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£xx

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• xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx• xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxxx

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Goal Measure Target

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Goal Measure TargetGoal Measure Target

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xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx

Missionxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx

• xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xx

• xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xx

• xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx

• xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx• xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

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• xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx• xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxx

xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx

• xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx

Framework for a Balanced Business Strategy

So your Balanced Business Strategy now has statements of vision, values, vital few goals and one or two breakthrough goals, all expressed with a three-year timeframe in mind. Using this three-year view, the remaining task is to think through with your leadership team how you would define the goals and set the targets for just one year ahead. During this task, you can also capture the main projects to be delivered to achieve the goals.

You now have a communicable strategy.

Vision statement

Short Mission statement

Values statement

Balanced goal categories

Headings of key projects to

deliver goals

Headings showing winning priorities

Specific goal statements

Specific measures and targets

per goal

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Leading Strategy:

Focus 9 Paint your picture of success in three to five years time; talk to people about it and listen to their views; understand what your analysis and research is telling you; start to capture the vision in words; make sure it sends a clear direction (the train is going this way) and is inspirational (come on board)

9 Define what will enable you to win in the marketplace – your winning priorities

9 Working with your leadership team, draft goal statements to drive towards the vision and winning priorities; get down to the 15 or less vital few goals; state also what you will not be focusing on.

Balance 9 Ensure the vital few goals are distributed across the categories of impact on the marketplace/customers, processes, people and performance

9 Check for goal descriptions which require leading, not lagging, indicators

9 Identify the five or so values statements that describe how you want to be recognised by your customers.

Stretch 9 Make sure the vital few goals are SMART and are always expressed as specific goal statements with dedicated measures and targets; set the targets to be stretching but attainable

9 Identify the one or two breakthrough goals that will drive step jump improvements in performance

9 Capture and communicate your strategy through a one-page Balanced Business Strategy; have two focal points with targets for three years and one year.

10

THIN

K P

LAN

D

ELIV

ERR

EVIE

W

SHAPING3-5 year vision

Winning priorities

‘Vital few’goals

Breakthrough goals

Annual targets and objectives

Projects and actions

DOING

annualplanningcycle

planningframework

Execution: Alignment, Engagement, DisciplineIt’s great to have a communicable strategy. You can use it with confidence to make decisions and you can use it with passion to discuss your business with people inside and outside of the organisation. But there is much more to do to turn the strategy into success. Effective execution is at least as important as the excellence of the strategy itself.

Execution is largely about discipline. The discipline of working to a set timetable so strategy execution fits with and then reinforces the natural business rhythm. The discipline of sticking with the defined strategy and not second-guessing it. And the discipline of relentlessly driving towards the stated goals.

The diagram opposite adds a timing discipline – often called the annual planning cycle – to the planning framework discussed earlier. To embed this natural rigour into your organisation, you need to apply the techniques of Alignment, Engagement and Discipline.

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Alignment

With the Balanced Business Strategy, you now have a communicable strategy, so communicate it. This may sound obvious but leaders typically under-communicate their strategy. You will need to make the one-page strategy accessible to people in your organisation, explain it to them and bring it to life. Take it with you whenever you go walkabout and always use it. People will pick up on your enthusiasm and passion.

However, if your organisation is at all complex, you will not easily be able to communicate directly and regularly with everyone. You will need to align your leadership teams and ensure the same messages and beliefs are passed on through the organisation lines. Different business units may face different challenges yet a lot of their strategic needs may be similar. Indeed, the winning strategies may well lie in the inter-dependence between business units. Similarly functional teams also need to be strongly aligned. Strategic alignment is best achieved by each team taking the top team’s Balanced Business Strategy and working out their best contribution to it in collaboration with other contributing teams. The aim is to encourage teams to commit to inter-dependent plans.

The same logic applies to different levels with the goals of a team at one level contributing closely and visibly to those of the team above. Achieving a strong degree of alignment across a complex organisation requires a lot of iteration until the best set of aligned plans emerges. This process is called ‘catchball’ and can be facilitated to make it happen speedily.

Unilever is a giant multinational with hundreds of brands and operations in almost every country. 120,000 people work in sales teams, category teams, innovation centres, functional expertise centres, regional supply chains and many other sub-

alignedplans

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divisions. How does the Chief Executive ensure all these people and teams pull in the same direction? The solution is to have one core discipline called Strategy Into Action™ that aligns leadership teams at every level and every function. Using the same one-page strategy format, each leadership team creates its strategic plan not in isolation but in collaboration with the levels above, below and across. This allows the Unilever top executive team to manage the whole global corporation with just 16 goals.

However strong the alignment of strategic plans becomes, you still cannot delegate strategy execution; it must be led personally. This requires awareness and attention to how you and your colleagues behave as leaders. Consistency is required. Consistency in making decisions based on the Balanced Business Strategy, consistency of messages and consistency in dealing with people. Nothing causes more confusion in an organisation than leaders displaying conflicting attitudes and variable behaviours.

Your organisational values defined in the Balanced Business Strategy will help here. Invest some time in defining with your team what behaviours exemplify these values – both good and bad examples. Then spend some more time rehearsing the good behaviours and seeking feedback to ensure you are being consistent. A leadership team demonstrating aligned behaviours will earn a lot of respect from people inside and outside the business.

“Understanding how to create alignment in organisations is a big deal, one capable of producing significant payoffs for all types of organisations.”

– Robert Kaplan and David Norton

Engagement

Even with a clear strategy and strong leadership, the desired results will prove elusive without mobilising the people who do the day to day work. People

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BALANCEDSCORECARD

engagement at all levels of the organisation and all stages of the process is a prerequisite for effective strategy execution. People like to know and understand the big picture, how other people are contributing to it and, most of all, how they can work on and ‘own’ strategic delivery in their own area. People like to feel involved.

Engagement requires winning hearts as well as minds. Winning the hearts of people is about inspiring belief in the strategic direction and generating passion for what we are doing. Winning the minds of employees is about appreciating their perspective, listening to their views and incorporating their insights. The leader’s willingness to engage people in the strategic process will be rewarded in commitment and passion for work. This can become a tangible asset noticed by customers and others in the marketplace. In turn this reinforces and deepens the organisational values.

People are our greatest asset but we don’t own them. As Shakespeare noted in Henry V “every subject’s duty is the King’s – but every subject’s soul is his own.” A skilled leader matches talents and capabilities against the strategic needs of the business in an engaging human way, not mechanically or through bureaucracy. As the strategic plan builds into a detailed programme, it is important to be realistic and pragmatic about resourcing – the winning strategy will not succeed without the right people in place and committed to deliver it.

DisciplineOne common area of weakness is to believe that once a plan is finalised and agreed and people are clear what to do, then it will happen. Organisational life is too contrary for that: results have to be driven with relentless concentration and effort. Processes

14

and methodologies, tools and techniques, skills and competencies, all provide the discipline to complement effective leadership.

The bigger items in the strategic plans need to be converted into projects and even programmes of projects. Programme and project management is an under-rated skill. You will benefit considerably through finding or developing these skills in your organisation to keep up the energy behind the drive for results.

Similarly, effective measurement is a problem for many organisations, where the wrong metrics clog up the ability to know what is happening. The key here is to use a BalancedScorecard. This is a straightforward step once you have a good Balanced Business Strategy. The balanced scorecard simply tracks the measures specified for each strategic goal. The same scorecard should be used at every level and people at each level and in each team should feel fully accountable for progress against those measures. Progress is best highlighted using traffic light reporting.

Finally, a core discipline in strategy execution is the AnnualPlanningCycle. Most businesses have an annual budgeting process. This goes much further and ensures all the strategic needs are thought through and implemented within an annual cycle. It helps to work through the different stages needed in developing and then implementing a strategy and then allocating strict timeframes to each. This avoids common pitfalls such as taking too long over planning, not involving people early enough in planning, not thinking the strategy through well enough, not setting up the programme management to drive delivery, nor reviewing progress … and many other mistakes organisations make over and over again.

A simple concept for an annual planning cycle is shown in the next section on sustained results.

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Leading execution

Alignment

9 Make sure all business units and functions have plans aligned with your Balanced Business Strategy

9 Align teams also by level using catchball to promote dialogue, challenge and commitment

9 Work on your behaviour to create an aligned way of working which is tangible in the organisation.

Engagement

9 Involve as many people as you can manage in shaping, planning and defining the strategic plans

9 Work on the hearts and minds to engage people and allow them to feel committed and passionate about their work

9 Be sensible about resourcing and continually aim to match the talent in your organisation to the winning priorities.

Discipline

9 Apply effective programme and project management techniques

9 Apply a balanced scorecard for tracking

9 Impose a set planning timetable.

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Sustained ResultsThis guide has taken you, as a leader, through the shaping of a communicable strategy and the execution of it. If you apply the six elements outlined so far you will definitely see good results. Unfortunately, unless you are retiring this year, this is not quite enough. You have to sustain the results.

Sustaining your results means building on your one year success and doing better next year. This is why the Balanced Business Strategy must have a three year horizon as well as next year. Each year you need to expect and plan for better results and this means stretching the targets further as experience is gained.

Your vital few goals must be reviewed at the end of the year and you can change them for the new year. However, experience suggests that leadership teams take at least a year to understand fully how to deliver their goals and changing them can disrupt this learning. It is usually preferable to refine the goals from experience and focus on new stretching targets. On the other hand, business is dynamic and your strategy execution process must be similarly dynamic. When market needs change you must adapt and the strategy execution process should help you adapt quickly and effectively.

The most important task after a year of applying disciplined strategy execution is to learn more about the process and improve it. The second and third year is the opportunity to drive the whole strategy execution process harder and take it deeper into the organisation. Every leader should be using it as the primary leadership tool and ultimately every person in your organisation should be engaged by it. After two or three years, strategy execution as a business process should be fully and permanently embedded in your organisation.

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To help you achieve and reinforce this embedding, use the strategy execution wheel shown overleaf. The four phases of THINK, PLAN, DELIVER and REVIEW are repeated each year to enforce rhythm and rigour and apply the appropriate techniques at the right time.

“Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfilment.”

– Anthony Robbins

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The Strategy THINK

• Articulate a compelling vision. • Agree the winning priorities.• Build a Balanced Strategy with vital few goals.

PLAN

• Deploy with a process of catchball.• Align teams and processes.• Engage people and gain commitment.

DELIVER

• Drive programs and projects.• Measure progress with balanced scorecards and traffic-light

reporting.• Communicate progress and celebrate achievements.

REVIEW

• Review process and results.• Improve strategy development and execution. • Prepare for the next ‘Think’ phase.

“You can have a good strategy in place but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement that strategy, the culture of the organisation will defeat the strategy.”

– Dick Clark CEO Merck

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This disciplined approach of THINK>PLAN>DELIVER>REVIEW has proven in practice to align leadership teams, engage people, accelerate progress and deliver results. Timing should be prescribed and managed. Once an organisation has learned the rhythm, the THINK phase is typically from March to June of the year before, with PLAN following with greater detail and commitment until the end of the year. At this point the emphasis shifts totally to the DELIVER phase to drive for results by the end of the year. REVIEW is continuous through the year building up to a full review as the year closes to ensure the results have been achieved. This means leaders have to learn to THINK and PLAN for the next year while DELIVERING and REVIEWING the current year.

THIN

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DELIVER

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ideas

integrated activity

Quest Global Balanced Focused Plan 2005

1 YEAR STRATEGIC SUMMARY

Quest Global Balanced Focused Plan 2005

3 YEAR STRATEGIC SUMMARY

VISION

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mission

focus

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QWiP

teamwork

leadership

stretch goal

balance

breakthrough

vital few

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THE WINNING SYSTEM

TRANSFORMING processes

PERSONAL PERFORMANCE

PLANS

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programme and project management

BALANCED SCORECARD

situation changes

variances

course corrections

corrective actions

recommunicate

realign gaps

external position

benchmarks

internal gaps

POSITION ANALYSIS

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fitness review

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Breakthrough objective: Strategy Target

Target: Owner Measure

Measure: Milestone

XXX

YYY

Objective:

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Strategy Target Target:

Owner Measure Measure:

Milestone XXXX

YY

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planning tables

Execution Cycle

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Focus Not at all Definitely

We have a compelling and credible vision 1 2 3 4 5

We have defined what our winning priorities are (not just a wish list)

1 2 3 4 5

We have defined the vital few goals to achieve our vision and winning priorities

1 2 3 4 5

Focus score: ________

Balance

Our strategic plan is balanced (ie goals focus on market, operations, and people as well as financial performance)

1 2 3 4 5

Our performance indicators are mostly leading indicators

1 2 3 4 5

We have identified and stated our organisational values

1 2 3 4 5

Balance score: ______

Stretch

All our goals have sharp measures and targets: there are no fuzzy goals

1 2 3 4 5

One or two breakthrough goals have been defined

1 2 3 4 5

Our strategy is captured on a one-page Balanced Business Strategy

1 2 3 4 5

Stretch score: ______

A: How good is your Strategy?

How good is your

21

Strategy Execution?

Alignment Not at all Definitely

All our leadership teams have aligned and linked strategic plans

1 2 3 4 5

Each leadership level uses input from the level below as well as giving direction (catchball)

1 2 3 4 5

All our leaders exhibit aligned behaviours supporting our values

1 2 3 4 5

Alignment score: ______

Engagement

Our people are actively involved in planning, monitoring and delivering our strategy

1 2 3 4 5

Our people support the strategy with commitment and passion

1 2 3 4 5

We assess our capabilities and workloads and adjust resources to meet our strategic goals

1 2 3 4 5

Engagement score: ____

Discipline

We follow a rigorous planning timetable 1 2 3 4 5

We apply effective programme and project management techniques

1 2 3 4 5

We monitor progress through a balanced scorecard and ensure accountability

1 2 3 4 5

Discipline score: _____

B: How good is your Execution?

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How good is your Strategy Execution?

+ ExecutionFocus

Balance

Stretch

Alignment

Engagement

Discipline

=

Strategy

0 - 30 Act now! There is a lot of work to do to rescue your organisation.

31 - 50 The warning signs are there. Identify and work on the weak areas.

51 - 70 Some elements of the formula may be strong but a more holistic approach to improving strategy development and execution is required.

71 - 90 Well done! Your organisation may already be world class at strategy execution but beware of complacency; much effort is required to maintain these levels of performance.

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Appendix

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Quest Worldwide is a global change management consultancy working for multinationals in all sectors. Quest’s mission is:

To enable leaders to achieve sustained results by:

h focusing their strategy

h engaging their people

h driving improvement.

Quest works to values that clients see as:

h committed

h collaborative

h challenging

h enthusiastic

h delivering results.

Quest’s services are focused on:

Strategy Implementation Guiding clients to create, align, deploy and deliver compelling and communicable strategies at all levels of the organisation. We mobilise and commit teams at each level, ensuring every person knows how to contribute to their company’s goals.

People Engagement Working with clients to create a service-oriented high-performing culture, impacting the behaviours of people at all levels. We design and run High Impact Events to engage the creativity, knowledge and passion in teams of all sizes.

About Quest

25

Operational Excellence Advising, coaching and equipping client teams to raise the performance of business processes to high levels of capability, drawing on an array of tools from lean to six sigma. We embed a culture of continuous improvement in order to sustain the drive for even better performance.

The following service model shows how Quest typically works holistically with clients, blending these service areas to apply the most appropriate techniques for maximum impact and benefits.

Strategy Implementation

• balanced strategy • leadership development • values and behaviours

People Engagement

• service / continuous improvement culture

• team development and coaching

• high impact events

Operational Excellence

• customer-focused business processes

• fast, lean, responsive operations

• consistent, assuredperformance

Focusing strategy, engaging peopleand driving improvement

Strategy Implementation

• balanced strategy • leadership development • values and behaviours

People Engagement

• service / continuous improvement culture

• team development and coaching

• high impact events

Operational Excellence

• customer-focused business processes

• fast, lean, responsive operations

• consistent, assuredperformance

Focusing strategy, engaging peopleand driving improvement

strategystrategy

energyenergyagilityagility

Worldwide

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About the authors

Dr. Steve Smith, founder and chairman of Quest Worldwide, has been helping organisations transform their performance and culture for over 25 years. Steve’s wide experience of consulting in global corporate change has helped him become regarded as one of the most progressive change management consultants of his generation.

Steve has conducted major transformations in a host of organisations through the provision of timely, supportive and often pioneering consultancy advice. A strong advocate of a holistic approach to business, Steve works with his clients to create and apply a stretching yet balanced strategy and a culture with a relentless drive for results.

Dr. Paul Ward, principal consultant, has been leading strategy deployment and organisational change assignments for Quest Worldwide for more than 12 years. His passion and enthusiasm is focused on transforming performance and culture at the level of the individual, the team, and the organisation. Paul has delivered conference presentations on strategy deployment, performance improvement, and values-based leadership.

For more information and case examples about Quest Worldwide, visit www.quest-worldwide.com

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