Gabazira's blog

The Effectiveness-Lab


Strategy

Effective organizations can be compared to a modern vehicle – it has many parts, some moving and others static. Yet, all parts have been put together in a system, to deliver a certain: amount of horse-power, comfort, specific niche like ‘4×4′ off road, town runner, or heavy goods carrier. Every part of a vehicles’ system has a role it plays in making the vehicle meet its niche-standard.

Effective strategy, and note the word EFFECTIVE, is the art of defining the vehicle, the value the vehicle brings to the buyer, and assembling all its moving and static parts, to meet the demand of the buyer.

Strategy is a fascinating art, whose success depends on how EFFECTIVENESS is delivered in organizations

  • What will ultimately kill your brand?

    Every organisation has a purpose for doing what it does. Organisations are living organisms – purposeful and with life. We are yet to come across an organisation that has been formed to do nothing. Even shell-companies, for those interested in the dark-world of tax evasion, have a purpose. So, if organisations have a life and… Continue reading

  • Blending Leadership and Strategy OV’s

    This blog concludes the Strategy Organisational Vital (OV) sub-series. We hope that many of you have and will continue to use the sub-series not as a ’strategy management’ but as a ’strategy management bursting’ guide. We need to look at strategy management through a different lens. Strategy ought to be less linear, after all, it’s… Continue reading

  • Strategy management – the death of ‘process’ and the rise of ‘outcome’

    Well, it’s only right that we start this blog with definitions of process and outcome. It would be ingenuous of us to assume that you all understand the two strategy management imperatives. Process: a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end Outcome: the way a thing turns out; a consequence It’s apparent… Continue reading

  • Strategy monitoring – two critical drivers

    Yes, managers need to understand the A-Z of strategy: its design, execution, and monitoring. This blog discusses the last piece of the strategy-management jigsaw – monitoring.  Apparently, ‘what gets measured gets managed’; so if strategy is meant to help businesses attain signature value-addition, then businesses have to ensure it’s monitored. When strategy is monitored, managers get… Continue reading

  • Strategy as miniature images and maps of a business (2)

    As a natural progression from last week, this week’s blog delves into the ‘making’ of miniature strategy. We have explored in past blogs the conventional and hybrid (the in-between) strategy making approaches. We now shift our conversation to discussing discontinuous strategy making. We have to ask the question: ‘how do companies create viable strategy under… Continue reading

  • Strategy as miniature images and maps of a business

    Picture yourself at this grande so called corporate strategy workshop, working in the opulence of a five-star hotel with all the honchos at your organization in attendance. At this sacred event, you will be surrounded by classic consultants elaborating every matter strategy, through various reflections and case studies. We know that you can’t help it,… Continue reading

  • Effective strategy and resilience

    We have discussed at the Effectiveness lab the new normal for organisational strategists The organisational development (OD.) power-play and dynamics have shifted in favour of intertwined and horizontal than vertical drivers. Siloed approaches to OD. have no place in the 21st Century bionically balanced organisation. The new normal is loose, fast-moving, and requires multiple factors… Continue reading

  • Strategy execution – from theory to practice (2)

    According to McKinsey, 70% of change efforts fall short of the expected results. Put another way, for all the change work you leadership gurus do and boast about, only 30% gets you a good measure of efficacy. Even giants, as we shall see on this blog, have failed to achieve the expected standard of strategy… Continue reading

  • Strategy execution – from theory to practice (1)

    This blog intends to take you beyond understanding strategy execution, the focus of last week’s blog, to mastering how to attain the normally elusive execution-excellence. And as we will find out later, it boils down to certain specific leadership traits. Achieving execution-excellence is more of a behaviour than technical mastery issue. There are individual characters that… Continue reading

  • Strategy execution

    Having discussed what strategy is as well as its design, it’s about time that we considered how to get the best out of company strategy – execution. Execution is different from implementation as will be shown later on this blog. A multitude of global organisations write and implement good strategy plans.  However, many companies don’t do… Continue reading

About Me

Apollo B. Gabazira is an Ugandan OD. junkie fascinated by matters that render organisations/individuals effective or not. He blogs on effective leadership and management. He is a devoted green-farmer and breeds the Ayrshire cow at Nakabugu, Luuka district, Uganda. Apollo is quite effective at what he chooses to do.

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