Keeping Strategies Coherent
How leaders maintain alignment without taking control of every decision
Establishing Direction Is Only the Beginning
One of a leader’s fundamental responsibilities is establishing direction. That includes clarifying the organization’s purpose, defining what it intends to accomplish, and determining how it will pursue those objectives. But establishing direction is only the beginning. As strategies are translated into action throughout an organization, maintaining coherence becomes an equally important responsibility.
Objectives describe what the organization intends to accomplish. Strategies describe how it intends to accomplish those objectives. Initiatives turn those strategies into coordinated action. Although these distinctions are useful, the relationships are seldom simple. One strategy may support several objectives, and one objective may require multiple strategies and initiatives.
Nor does every strategy originate at the top. Leaders throughout an organization develop strategies appropriate to their responsibilities, informed by knowledge that senior executives may not possess. That is necessary. An organization cannot function effectively if every strategic decision requires approval from above.
The challenge is ensuring that these independently developed strategies work together. Coherence does not mean uniformity. Different parts of the organization can pursue different approaches while contributing to a common direction. The leader’s responsibility is to make those relationships visible and address conflicts when they arise.
Strategy Does Not Cascade Neatly
We often describe strategy as something that cascades through an organization. Senior leaders establish objectives, their direct reports develop supporting strategies, and successive levels translate those strategies into increasingly specific plans.
That description is useful, but incomplete. Organizations are not simple hierarchies of independent activities. Functions share resources, depend on one another, and contribute to multiple objectives. Strategies developed within one part of the organization can affect work elsewhere, even when both are aligned with their respective leaders’ priorities.
At Intel, we used Management by Objectives (MBO), an approach closely related to what many organizations now call Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). MBOs provided a mechanism for making objectives explicit and connecting individual work to organizational priorities. I remember quarters when some of my objectives did not appear in my manager’s MBOs. That was not necessarily a problem. Different roles have different responsibilities, and not every legitimate objective needs to appear at every level.
Over time, I observed less emphasis on MBOs in the parts of Intel where I worked, a change I regretted. Although MBOs were not a complete solution to strategic coherence, I valued the discipline they provided for making objectives explicit and examining their relationships.
Even when objectives are well aligned vertically, that does not establish coherence across organizational boundaries. Two functions can each pursue legitimate objectives while developing conflicting strategies or duplicating the same work.
The Relationships Leaders May Not See
Consider an organization in which the sales function is developing a strategy to improve responsiveness to customers, operations is standardizing processes to improve efficiency, and IT is consolidating systems to reduce complexity. Each strategy may be reasonable. Yet the approaches could reinforce one another, create conflicts, or require decisions that none of the functions can make independently.
The problem is not necessarily the quality of the individual strategies. It is the visibility of their relationships.
I encountered a more concrete example while working on an initiative at Intel to improve how employees ordered IT products and services. I recognized that we needed an inventory of available products and services, order processing, fulfillment, and related capabilities. As I reached out to people across the IT organization, I repeatedly heard that someone else was working on something similar and that I should talk with them.
Those conversations revealed initiatives pursuing essentially the same scope. The duplication was not discovered through a formal strategy review or an organizational mechanism for identifying overlapping work. It emerged as I talked with the people involved.
The experience illustrates a limitation of vertical alignment. Even when people are pursuing worthwhile objectives, the organization may lack visibility into work being undertaken elsewhere. Leaders need ways to discover those relationships before separate efforts become established commitments.
The same visibility can reveal opportunities. One initiative may provide capabilities another needs. Two strategies may share a dependency that neither group fully understands. Identifying those connections can improve results without requiring every decision to move up the hierarchy.
Leading Coherence Without Centralizing Strategy
One response to these problems is to centralize strategic decisions. Require approval of every strategy and initiative, and senior leadership can theoretically prevent duplication and resolve conflicts before work begins.
But that approach creates another problem. Senior leaders become bottlenecks, and decisions move away from the people who understand the work. The organization sacrifices responsiveness and local judgment in pursuit of control.
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A better approach is to establish clear direction while creating mechanisms for identifying and reconciling relationships across organizational boundaries.
Leaders need to make objectives and priorities sufficiently clear that others can develop appropriate strategies. They also need visibility into significant initiatives, particularly those that cross boundaries, compete for shared resources, or depend on capabilities being developed elsewhere.
That visibility can come through cross-functional discussions, portfolio reviews, and direct conversations among the people responsible for related work. The objective is not to subject every initiative to another approval process. It is to discover where coordination or a decision is needed.
Not every difference requires intervention. Different groups may legitimately pursue different approaches. Leaders should concentrate on situations where strategies conflict, resources are being committed to substantially duplicated work, or decisions in one area materially affect another.
When intervention is necessary, the leader’s responsibility is to ensure reconciliation occurs. That may require direct involvement, particularly when priorities or authority are contested, but it should not be the default. Whenever practical, the people closest to the work should resolve the issue and retain responsibility for their decisions.
Maintaining Coherence as Strategies Evolve
Strategic coherence cannot be established once during annual planning and then assumed to persist. Objectives change, new information emerges, and strategies evolve as people learn more about the problems they are addressing.
An initiative that made sense six months ago may no longer support current priorities. A capability developed in one part of the organization may create opportunities elsewhere. A change in one strategy may introduce dependencies or conflicts that did not previously exist.
Leaders therefore need to revisit strategic relationships as part of normal organizational management. Reviews should consider not only whether initiatives are progressing, but whether they still support the intended objectives and remain consistent with related strategies.
This does not require constant replanning. Many adjustments can and should be made locally. The important question is whether a change affects other parts of the organization or alters a commitment that others are relying on. Those are the situations that call for broader coordination.
AI makes this responsibility more pressing. As organizations gain the ability to develop and execute initiatives faster, independently pursued efforts can multiply before their relationships are understood. Greater execution capacity does not automatically produce greater strategic coherence.
Coherence Is a Continuing Leadership Responsibility
Establishing direction and maintaining coherence are related but distinct leadership responsibilities. The first provides a common destination. The second helps ensure that the strategies and initiatives developed throughout the organization contribute to reaching it.
In practice, maintaining coherence requires leaders to establish clear objectives and priorities, maintain visibility into significant strategies and initiatives, and identify relationships that cross organizational boundaries. Where those relationships reveal duplication, conflicting priorities, or shared dependencies, leaders must ensure that the people involved reconcile them. And because strategies evolve, this cannot be a one-time exercise. It must become part of the organization’s regular management practices.
None of this requires leaders to approve every strategy or initiative. Their responsibility is to create the conditions in which people can develop and execute strategies independently while remaining aware of their effects on the broader organization.
The result is not an organization in which everyone follows the same strategy. It is one in which different strategies can evolve independently while continuing to support the organization’s objectives.
Further Reading
About the Author
Jose Solera is a former CIO, technology executive, and Organizational Performance Advisor. Through Solera Associates, he helps leaders address complex organizational challenges, improve execution, and build the capabilities needed for sustained performance.
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