Avoid the "Noise Before Defeat"

Book cover via Amazon
"Strategy without tactics is the long road to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

attributed to Sun Tzu

In their new book, The Execution Premium, Robert Kaplan and David Norton emphasize that good tactical execution and process optimization is not enough. Instead, organizations need to focus on whether the tactics and processes themselves are in line with the broader strategic goals.

The book, with the full title being The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008) is a follow up on their 1996 management primer The Balanced Scorecard.

While companies are increasingly using process optimization initiatives such as Six Sigma, there is often no determination that the processes that are being optimized are actually essential to the strategic goals of the organization. Why is that important? The authors say that "quality and process improvement programs are like teaching people how to fish. Strategy maps and scorecards teach people where to fish."

As reviewed by Adam Smith, Esq. , a leading website dedicated to law firm economics, writer and advisor Brice MacEwan gives the following law firm example of this issue:

"A 'zero-based budgeting' examination of your office space requirements--for partners, for associates, for staff, for the library, for conference rooms, etc.--might yield incremental improvements in how you allocate those expensive downtown Class AA building square feet. But they will not address the question of whether all the activities you perform in that premium space need to be performed there."

In short, if you are efficient at executing processes that are not in line with your strategic objectives, you may perform well but fall behind your competition. Only by matching tactics and strategy will your firm truly be siccessful.

Thanks to Adam Smith, Esq. for drawing our attention to this book.

For more information:

The Palladium Group: About The Execution Premium

Listen to how Palladium’s founder, Dr. David P. Norton describes an Execution Premium.