Our approach combines five processes, 25 years of achieving strategy as a CEO and the advance teaching of the Rotman School of Business. into our Achieving Strategy method. The methodologies are:

• Theory of Constraints – Eli Goldratt
• Strategic Doing – Purdue University
• Goal Alignment Program – J.A. Harcourt and Kim Allen
• Stats with Why – Simon Sinek
• Lean start-up

In his Harvard Business Review article Five Questions to Build a Strategy former Rotman Dean Roger Martin outlines his preferred approach. He treats strategy — making as developing a set of answers to five interlinked questions. The questions — which cascade logically from the first to the last — are as follows:

1. What are our broad aspirations for our organization & the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
2. Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
3. In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?
4. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
5. What management systems are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a management model that views any manageable system as being limited in achieving more of its goals by a very small number of constraints. There is always at least one constraint. TOC uses a focusing process to find the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it. TOC adopts the common idiom “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the outcome. TOC views that all organizations exist to create shareholder value. There are two necessary conditions satisfied customers and satisfied staff. In our approach we expand the view to encompass the entire workforce. Organizations rely on the entire workforce to deliver value to customers.  

Strategic Doing teaches people how to form collaborations quickly, move them toward measurable outcomes and make adjustments along the way. In today’s world, collaboration is essential to meet the complex challenges we face. Strategic Doing enables leaders to design and guide new networks that generate creative solutions. It is a new strategy discipline that is lean, agile and fast—just what organizations, communities and regions need to survive and thrive.

The diagram below combines TOC and Strategic Doing for a dynamic process of strategic execution. 

Allenvision Approach to Executing Strategy

For not-for-profit organizations defining shareholder value is often more challenge.  In Associations, members may be the shareholders, workforce and customers all at the same time. Thus knowing who the shareholders, workforce and customers is essential to effectively achieving strategy.

The Goal Alignment Program is a rigorous, sustainable governance model where regulatory policy development is integral to the way organization does work. This model ensured that every human, organizational, technical, and financial resource supports and contributes to achieving the objects of the purpose of the organization in a way that is demonstrable, transparent, measurable, efficient, effective, and comply with its principles, policy directives, and constraints.

Starts with Why – Simon Sinek → The idea that great leaders inspire others by putting:

• the Why (the purpose) before
• the How (the process) or
• the What (the product)

These revolutionary philosophies on leadership can easily be used in any professional and personal situation that calls for inspiration and influence.

Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers’ hands faster. This method teaches you how to drive a startup-how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere-and grow a business with greatest acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.