The chain behind the goal

The problem it solves

Nearly every company has goals: grow by a set amount, improve profitability, cut complaints, open a new line. What almost none has written down is what each one depends on. The financial goal gets announced as if it would happen by itself, when it is really the last link in a chain that runs through clients, through the operation and through the people who keep it going.

When that chain is not drawn, each area pursues its own part in good faith and with no idea of what it depends on. Sales takes on work the operation cannot deliver well; the operation trims exactly what clients value most in order to meet its own indicator; HR hires for growth nobody has connected to real capacity. Results meetings argue over numbers that move without anyone being able to say why, and every area arrives with an explanation that leaves its own part safe.

The cumulative effect is a strategy that exists as a list rather than as a system. Efforts do not add up, sometimes they cancel out, and the goals that depend on something nobody is doing get discovered at the end of the year, when there is no time left to correct them.

What it covers

A working day to draw the company's strategy map: the chain of causes connecting the results it is after with what has to happen first among its clients, in its operation, in its people and in its technology. It is not a session about indicators or tracking. It works on the logic of the strategy — what produces what — which is exactly what a dashboard takes for granted and rarely examines.

The construction runs backwards. It starts from the results leadership is already pursuing and, for each one, the group asks what would have to be true of clients for it to happen, what the operation would have to do well for that, and which capabilities in people and systems would make it possible. ALUD uses as vocabulary the seven engines Business 360 reads — Leadership, Strategy, Finance, People, Operations, Technology and Growth — so that every relationship on the map is stated in a language the whole organisation shares.

The drawing, done as a group on a wall or a worktable, reveals what a list of goals hides. Orphan goals turn up, expected without anything causing them; goals from two areas that collide and are better reconciled before they collide in practice; and, often, a link much of the chain depends on and that nobody is paying attention to. Each finding is discussed until a decision is reached: assign a cause, drop the goal, reconcile the ones that contradict each other, or protect the critical link.

The day closes by choosing the causal relationship worth testing first and the evidence that would confirm or refute it, because a map is a set of hypotheses, not a creed. The team leaves with its strategy drawn on a single page everyone can read the same way. The indicators that will later track that chain, and the rhythm for reviewing them, are subsequent ALUD work in Strategy and Business Intelligence, and they start from this map rather than replacing it.

What participants learn

• Build the chain of causes linking the results the company pursues to what has to happen among clients, operations, people and technology.
• Identify the goals with no assigned cause and those that depend on something nobody is doing.
• Detect goals from different areas that contradict each other before they collide in practice.
• Locate the link that most of the chain depends on.
• Select the causal relationship worth testing first and the evidence that would put it to the test.

Agenda

1. 01Strategy as a chain of assumptions: this produces that
2. 02Working back from results: clients, operations, people and technology
3. 03ALUD's seven engines as the map's shared vocabulary
4. 04Orphan goals: what is expected without anything causing it
5. 05Goals that collide across areas
6. 06The link everything else depends on
7. 07Which relationship gets tested first, and with what evidence
8. 08One page the whole leadership team reads the same way

What the organisation leaves with

• The current strategy mapped on one page, with the causal links between goals drawn in.
• A list of goals with no assigned cause, with the decision taken on each.
• The conflicts between goals of different areas, identified in writing along with who must resolve them.
• The causal assumption to be tested first, with the evidence that would confirm or refute it.