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 Spot Gridlock Problems Before they are out of control
Reviewed by Juanita Watson for Reader Views (8/06)
Pamela Harper is an internationally know speaker, author, and is the president of Business Advancement, Inc. She has over 20 years of experience as a consultant with companies ranging from small-business to Fortune 500. She is sought out by leaders in the business marketplace to transform their internal strategies and increase performance results.
The first part of "Preventing Strategic Gridlock" Harper reveals and explains seven of the most common hidden roadblocks that stall business growth. She outlines real-life examples of the step-by-step path to the downward slide giving readers a cut-and-dry visual of how this happens.
Part Two of "Preventing Strategic Gridlock" details Harper's six-step process for reducing the gridlock and enabling leaders to more smoothly integrate execution with strategic thinking and planning. Harper discovered these six principles and guidelines during her research and consulting experiences and research, and has formed U.N.L.O.C.K. to `unlock' performance.
Pamela Harper guides businesses to re-evaluate their strategies and enables leaders to run a more effective and efficient organization. Bottom line - Every business leader would benefit from having "Preventing Strategic Gridlock" on their resource shelf. It is educational, consistent, and proven effective, and will help leaders spot gridlock problems before they get out of control.
 Common Sense Advice For Moving Your Business Forward
The other day, I came across a very interesting book called Preventing Strategic Gridlock, by Pamela Harper. Ms. Harper is the President of Business Advancement Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to helping leaders transform strategy into high performance results. Check out the link to the article entitled The Key to Aligning Strategy with Execution on her website.
I really like Preventing Strategic Gridlock.
Ms. Harper begins her book be describing what she calls the Seven Hidden Roadblocks that come about because leaders have mistaken assumptions about their organizations' reality.
The Seven Hidden Roadblocks are:
1. One size fits all -- The tendency to adopt previously successful solutions without regard to whether they can work in your organization now.
2. Management by lobotomy -- The tendency to rely on organizational "surgery (layoffs, reorganizations, budge cuts) to solve persistent organizational problems.
3. Act now, think later -- The tendency to assume that you have enough information to select strategies and intiatives to meet your organization's real needs.
4. Magic of the marquee -- The tendency to expect the organization to instantly accept change.
5. Roller coaster -- The tendency to assume that introducing a rapid series of new strategies and initiatives will move the organization forward.
6. Tin ear -- The tendency to preceive only one "tone" of reality.
7. Lighthouse -- The tendency to "stay the course" despite clear cut danger signs.
Ms. Harper goes on to explain how to U.N.L.O.C.K. strategic gridlock
* U -- Understand the full challenge
* N -- Negotiate key stakeholder buy in
* L -- Locate cultural 'advancers and 'blockers"
* O -- Organize priorities, goals and action plans
* C -- Communicate credibly
* K -- Keep adjusting
I won't go into more detail here. You'll have to read the book yourself. However I believe that any leader who wants to move his or her organization forward will benefit from reading and applying the concepts in Preventing Strategic Gridlock.
Overcoming Stalls that Derail Strategic Progress
Several studies of strategic management have found that around 70 percent of all new strategies fail. The main culprit is that they are not effectively executed. In many cases, the strategies would have been all but impossible to execute because the organization was overburdened with other challenges, did not have the resources in place and poorly communicated what was to be done.
Preventing Strategic Gridlock aims at overcoming those problems by both selecting more appropriate strategies to implement and avoiding the common pitfalls of execution for strategies that could be executed well by an organization.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part looks at the main causes of strategic gridlock (assuming anyone can execute any strategy any way they want, continuing to restructure and streamline to address strategic and implementation issues, being too quick and not considered enough in reacting to new problems, thinking that everyone knows what to do if you just announce a new program, switching to the flavor of the week fix so that everyone is confused and dispirited, not listening to what's not working, and not considering immovable obstacles to progress).
I loved that section. It reminded me of the first part of the book I co-authored The 2,000 Percent Solution, in which we looked at the stalls to organizational progress. These hidden roadblocks are illustrated with very funny cartoons that make the point very clear, good examples that you will understand, underlying beliefs that can get you into trouble, how to uncover the problem, a check list to help you see how bad the problem is in your organization, and a list of questions and answers to issues that you will probably be concerned about.
In the second part, Ms. Harper describes a six-step process organized around the acronym UNLOCK. This process encourages you to understand the full nature of the challenge you face, negotiating the enthusiastic participation of those who need to implement the new direction, considering how your culture can help or hurt in the change, organizing to get the work done, communicating in ways that make sense and to keep adjusting in response to what you run into.
I thought that the process was not quite sufficiently detailed for what most people will need to follow this advice. That was the only significant weakness in the book. But the second part does a fine job of raising the right issues.
Again, I was struck by the parallel to The 2,000 Percent Solution where we describe an eight-step process to make progress in our second part.
After sleeping on my reaction to the book, I feel like Ms. Harper has produced a 2,000 percent solution for overcoming the problems of making strategic change. Nice stallbusting, Ms. Harper!
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about developing or implementing a new strategy.
Leading the people after the strategy
Pam Harper's does a great service to the pervasive, male-dominated (and I'm a male) culture of business leadership that thinks strategy only involves "making the numbers". In an engaging style, she uses the first half of her book to describe 7 common, but hidden roadblocks that companies can easily hit when they are tried to implement strategic growth through changing elements of their business. I like the chapter on "Tin Ear", where management has a tendency to tune out the opinions and concerns of others. The company may have an open door policy, quality circles, and a suggestion program (with cash rewards!) but may miss the more obvious daily chatter from employees, customers and other stakeholders that are providing valuable feedback.The second half of the the book presents the author's UNLOCK methodology for addressing strategic gridlock. It contains 6 steps, with steps 2 and 3 (Understand the Full Challenge and Negociate Key Stakeholder Buy-in) as highlights. The focus on seeing the complete job to be done helps get the timeframe and effort to be more realistic, and the buy-in step focuses on how to play both offense and defense as you are communicating and implementing important changes. Having your management team familar with these concepts will allow you to sense and discuss when you may be hitting roadblocks or not doing all the work to unlock your organizations full potential. Highly reccomended read before you set off on your next strategic change journey.
How to Prevent It...How to Get Out of It
Obviously, it is highly advisable to identify and then eliminate potential problems before they occur. That is as true in business as it is in healthcare, athletic competition, and international travel. What we have here is a solid, well-organized, and well-written guide to preventing strategic gridlock. First, Harper carefully examines seven of the usual suspects which can cause it. Next, she introduces what she calls U.N.L.O.C.K., a system based on six principles by which to avoid or eliminate them. Finally, she shifts her reader's attention to countless real-world examples. Obviously, an inappropriate strategy almost invariably results in conflict, confusion, acrimony, perhaps operational gridlock, and worse yet, chaos. Moreover, Harper fully understands that even a fundamentally sound strategy can fail because of internal resistance by those whom Jim O'Toole describes as being captive to "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Or that strategy can become less effective or even ineffective because of market forces over which the organization has little (if any) conrol. Harper has absolutely no illusions about the complexity of these and other issues. She could easily have identified 14 or even 21 "roadblocks." Her U.N.L.O.C.K. system could have been based on 10 or even 15 principles. That's not the point. Rather, when crafting a strategy, decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) should identify and then prepare for what they perceive to be the potentially most formidable roadblocks to that strategy's success. (FYI, my personal preference is to view strategies as "hammers" and tactics as "nails.") Everyone must understand and support the strategy. What amounts to an "early warning system" is needed and everyone at least directly involved with the strategy and its tactics must be especially alert during the strategy's initial implementation. Although I encountered no "cutting edge thinking" in Harper's book, I hold it in high regard because it fully serves the needs of decision-makers who need (perhaps urgently) a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system by which to avoid or extricate their organizations from strategic gridlock. Another major benefit of having an "early warning system" is that if the strategy is a dud, that will soon be obvious and Harper's book can assist with whatever adjustments may be necessary. Those who share my interest in how and why even major corporations such as Ford, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's make bad strategic decisions, I urge them to check out Matt Haig's recently published Bad Brands.
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