At the start of my career, one of my mentors told me that, often, building a successful organization is 5% strategy and 95% execution. At the time, I worked for a management consultancy company and I learned the importance for an organization to not only excel in both areas and balance the two, but even more importantly to effectively integrate and align the day-to-day execution with the overall strategy direction. It is relatively easy to change the strategy but an organization's effectiveness is really put to test when trying to align the big execution engine with the new strategy.
When I started at SCP, I remember being impressed of the way SCP has dealt with these issues throughout its journey the last 9 years, a journey that encompasses three fairly different phases and business model directions. So when answering the question "How do we do what we do?", I think there are a few cornerstones that describe how SCP deals with strategy and execution, and how the two are intertwined and aligned.
It certainly helps to be a smaller organization but I think there is more to it:
- Stay true to our purpose - Even though SCP has gone through three different phases and business models, the purpose has always been the same: "Reduce poverty through giving job-ready people outside the economic mainstream meaningful employment opportunities".
- Utilizing market forces for social good - our experience is that the private sector and non-profit sector often operate in silos. SCP identifies best practices in both sectors and works on "connecting the dots". We consciously staff our company with people from both sectors who bring a breath and depth of experience across multiple areas.
- "Do Tank" - SCP is operating in the intersection between a "think tank" and implementing social change. We measure our success based on the scale of the social impact, and realize that scale comes with big ideas and efficient execution.
- Snowball approach - It all starts with an idea, which we then go out and test on the ground with a sense of the opportunity we're looking to examine. We then step back and analyze what we have learned, and usually engage our partners to clarify and validate the opportunity through formal research. We then get into execution mode, still with an opportunistic mindset. We constantly challenge ourselves to come up with new and bigger ideas and when we do, the process starts all over again.
- Utilize partnerships and network - SCP is a small organization and our preference is to establish partnerships with experts in different areas instead of always building up the expertise in-house. Having said that, we spend a fair amount of time meeting with people to share our experience and learning, recognizing that we have learned a lot from the experience of others who have also been generous with their knowledge and time.
Posted by Magnus Sandberg on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010