Maddy N   0:21
Great. Hello and welcome to our next podcast, guys. Today, we will be discussing more on building winning strategies. Today we have Marc who has more than couple of decades of experience in helping leaders and teams. That’s you know succeed in their day-to-day work and activities. He has been helping them in terms of bridging the gap between strategy to execution. That is where Marc brings on board his expertise, his experience and we would be learning more from Marc today.
Welcome, marc. 

Marc Sniukas   0:53
Hi Maddy. Thank you. 

Maddy N   0:55
So, Marc, before we begin, I’m sure right, our audience would be more interested in knowing more about you and the moment I say you know you have helped so many leaders and organisations bridging the gap between strategy to execution this itself, you know kind of excites the conversation. So you know, can we have a quick brief about you and then we’ll go ahead and have our conversation initiated. 

Marc Sniukas   1:17
Yeah, sure. So as you said, so I’ve been doing strategy work for a little over two decades now and I actually started off teaching strategy. So right out of Business school, I built my my first company and  I did leadership development and I taught the stuff you know that we learned about strategy in Business School and at the university. And then at some point  I wanted to get more practice. So  I moved from teaching to actually doing it. So I I helped companies.
Huge strategy. So I work for probably a decade in strategy execution, doing a lot of change management and to do all of organisational transformation. And one of the things that I’m sure we’re going to talk about it that I learned during that time was that you know we we always say that say that we need to focus so much on strategy execution and it’s all about execution, right. But at the end of the day, if you have a weak strategy, then that’s going to lead to poor execution. So with that then I also move more and more into strategy design. So nowadays, yeah, I I help leaders design, activate, execute winning strategies. And I do that mostly by giving them the the tools and the proven systems that help them to develop clear, actionable and and winning strategies. And so actually most of my work has been with business units, divisions, country organisations that are part of larger groups. So I did a lot of work for.
BMW, for example, did work for Lufthansa, HSBC.
So on so forth. 

Maddy N   2:49
Amazing. Amazing. I think you’re also continuing on that part, right, Marc? So as you rightly mentioned, you have been helping leaders in terms of, you know defining strategies that is that makes sense to them depending on the industry and the business that they’re dealing to, you know. So here’s a question, right. So what is one key element and you referred about you know strategy has to be right. Otherwise it’ll have an impact on the execution side, right.
So what is that one key element that you believe when you, you know, help them define strategies. You know it needs to be more effective in terms of executions. 

Marc Sniukas   3:26
Yeah, I mean, so to make it good in execution. So they are. So one thing, if it’s really one thing, then I would focus on make sure that you have a good strategy. You know lots of organisation to say, yeah, yeah, we have a strategy and then I say OK, let’s see it. Show me your strategy and then it’s just goals or it’s just a high level vision statement. Many times I see just a financial forecast and all these things are good and all these things are important but they are not strategy right, so.
Lots of organisations, they do things that.
Call strategy, but it’s not really strategy, so that’s that’s really the first thing to really focus on having a good strategy. And then what I what I often see why strategy execution doesn’t work is that at the end of the day, leadership is not very serious about implementing it. So they they might just communicate it once they might cascade it down with OKRs, but then they kind of stop there. And I think if you’re really serious about implementing a new strategy, and especially if it’s a strategic change. So if you’re doing something new or  you’re changing your focus, that needs a lot of attention that needs a lot of focus, and it also needs a lot of of work and involvement  from leadership and engagement of the of the team. So that being serious I think is that yeah, the, the, the next most important one after having really designed a good strategy. 

Maddy N   4:47
How? How? How can they ensure that you know, whatever effect, whatever strategy they are defined is effective in nature, right? 

Marc Sniukas   4:55
Yeah. So I mean there. So the question is a little bit, what is a good strategy or how do you know whether it’s a good strategy or not, right? And at the end of the day, the strategy is really it’s something you have. It’s a hypothesis that you have, OK, if we do this, then it’s going to lead to these kind of results, right? If we do this, then our customers, they, they will buy and we will be successful. So and because it’s all a hypothesis, there is no other way to really know whether it works apart from doing it now, we can do it in, in small steps you can do.
Experiments here and there to test various elements of your strategy or various assumptions underlying hypothesis that you have. But at the end of the day you never know until you actually implement your strategy, whether it is going to to work or not. And then again, you need to be serious about it. You need to put the resources behind it. You need to put the effort behind it to give it a chance to be a successful strategy. 

Maddy N   5:50
Right. And and you know while you know we have been like studying more about you, we also understand that you refer about you know avoiding older school planning methods, right. I mean when people define the strategies, they go back to those old methods, right. So what is your suggestion then to them to keep the strategies fresh and relevant, keeping in mind today’s dynamic, you know, change in the market. 

Marc Sniukas   6:07
Yeah.
Yeah. So, so the what you’re referring to, yeah. So II challenge this, this I always call it old school or traditional strategic planning approach, right, because it goes back to the first argument I made that many times we call something a strategy, what’s not really a strategy. So it’s more like a plan, right. And so  to counter that I think there was a little a lot of misconception and a little of a lot of noise out there about what strategy really is. So the the key thing here. 

Maddy N   6:24
Yeah. 

Marc Sniukas   6:43
Go back to a well established definitional strategy, which is that he is about solving the challenges you face on the way towards your ambitions. So that is the core strategy. So if you don’t have a challenge, you don’t need a strategy, but the plan will do. That’s also always how I explained the difference between a plan and a strategy. And so you need to  focus on that. So the challenge and then how do you make it adaptable while you we make it adaptable by you zoom out into the future.
Now so you think about what is our ambition in maybe three years in, in five years, what’s the vision? What would we like to achieve?
But then you zoom back into what are the challenges that we face today? So what’s the major challenge that’s kind of either keeping us from, from getting to our vision or a challenge could also be an opportunity. And the challenge is how to seize that opportunity that is going to help us to move towards our ambition. And so you focus on that, you solve that if it’s really a big strategic challenge, it might take you six months, 12 months to really solve it or maybe 18 months to solve it and then.
Once you’ve solved that, you are in a new position. Things might have changed a little bit around you and then you reoriented yourself and you focus on the next challenge.
You kind of keep that long term vision, but you don’t plan out the next five years because we don’t know what’s going to happen, as you said and then you focus on these challenges and you adapt as you go as you go along. 

Maddy N   8:06
Absolutely right. You know this makes sense and I mean continuing on the same line, right, when such kind of strategies are defined, right? I mean, we all know that you know the strategies are defined at the top level, but the execution happens below level right below middle management, right. You would find you know. So I mean what is what is your suggestion you know or maybe how it has worked out in your case when you’ve, you know mentored leaders out in the industry that? 

Marc Sniukas   8:21
Yeah.
Hmm. 

Maddy N   8:32
OK. How do you align these teams and keep them continuously motivated to contribute to the strategies as you rightly mentioned that sometimes when they define their strategies, align it cascade down and then forget it, right? So how do you ensure that people are fully aligned and? 

Marc Sniukas   8:38
Mm hmm.
Yeah. 

Maddy N   8:48
You know, we also kind of, you know, often talk about alignment leads to an agreement, right? If you and I are not agreeing to something, we are not fully aligned. I mean, you might have assigned to me. So you might have cascaded down to me.
Because that’s the authority you have. But are we aligned? Is a question mark, right? So in in such cases, how do you ensure that teams are fully aligned and you know they are effectively contributing towards their strategies? 

Marc Sniukas   9:15
Yeah. So I think maybe I want to challenge you a little bit on the on this notion that so this thinking, yeah, the top the top designs, the strategy and then the the bottom or the rest of the organisation has to has to execute it, right. So I think also here what we’re seeing is a much more iterative approach where everybody needs to be involved to some extent, right. It doesn’t mean that everybody will have a say or everybody can decide what the strategy should be, but you still can engage.
Important stakeholders, let’s call it that.
About the entire process.
And so the way I do that with my clients and the companies I work with is that so for example, if we say we want to focus or strategy is a focus on these challenges, we can ask the organisation what are the big challenges you see. And then from that kind of pick the two or three where we say well that’s really important. So you can engage the entire organisation, although management is going to make a decision on which ones you want to focus on in the same fashion. Then once you have defined your challenges, you can ask the organisation so.
So how should we go about it? Any ideas for what the solution should be? Right and people from from the grounds? People who who do the daily business, who are in in touch with the customers everyday they know. So they have good ideas. So it’s really about getting those ideas up into the into the strategy discussion, if you like. And then something that I like doing a lot is once we have a first idea for what the core strategy should look like we we call it a draught and we ask for feedback. So we again we go out.
To importance stakeholders, also shareholders, maybe even external people and we asked them about. So how do you think about this strategy? What do you like? What don’t you like? What concerns do you have? What would you need to be able to implement that? So again, you engage people throughout the organisation in the whole strategy discussion and then obviously leadership is always going to make the decision but can engage people and just by engaging them in this way, they will already be much more committed to.
Implementing the strategy and then. So the second point you mentioned is yes, the alignment is very important. And what what I do when it comes to alignment is. So yes, we have the OKRs and we have the objectives and that needs to be cascaded and all of that. But on top of that, I go to every function I go to every department and I have a discussion with them about. So how are you spending your time? What are the daily activities that you are actually doing and how aligned are these activities with what we would need?
From a strategy perspective, to give you an easy example, if for example in in the strategy we say we need to grow in customer segment B, but marketing and sales spends 95% of its time in customer segment A, what you’re doing, how are you spending your time is not aligned to what you would need from a strategic perspective, right? So we’re having these kind of discussions really right. And that’s also why. 

Maddy N   12:09
Yeah. 

Marc Sniukas   12:12
Or or why I think it’s not enough to just give goals or just assign resources.
Because if you give marketing and sales more resources, they might still spend it on customer segment A and not in customer segment B, right? So that’s why you have that we have that discussion around how do you spend the time, how aligned is how you spend the time and use your effort and your resources with the strategy.
Which always has a. Also this element of. What do we do less of and what do we actually stop doing, which is often the very, very difficult discussion, but it’s an important discussion to be had, because otherwise people always feel like, you know, strategy is something on top of daily business.
But strategy should be daily business man. If it’s daily business, then you’re not living your strategy. You’re not acting according to your strategy, so it’s never going to going to work. So we focus on these activities and that’s really how we we close the gap between strategy  and execution. 

Maddy N   13:07
So I think it’s just a very valid point right here. So what we’re recommending here is more of a bottom up engagement, right, thereby encouraging people to get involved and share their views and thereby align more towards strategy, right. But let’s take an example when and we have seen in many occasions, right when people take such inputs and we have found in. 

Marc Sniukas   13:18
Yeah. 

Maddy N   13:28
Not so many companies doing this kind of an exercise which you’ve recommended. Ideally you would find more of top down approach right? I mean bottom up in true sense, you know very less companies will find practising it. Probably they have matured the entire process over a period of time. But that’s the you know kind of a you know approach that most of the companies would like to, you know kind of consider it. 

Marc Sniukas   13:32
Mm hmm. 

Maddy N   13:50
Keeping in mind top down approach right when a lot of companies defines ambitious goals, right? These are all aspirational goals, and they’re aspiring to achieve it. 

Marc Sniukas   13:55
Mm hmm. 

Maddy N   14:00
And probably not have assessed as you started on a strategy note you mentioned that you need to zoom out and see you know what do you wish to achieve. 

Marc Sniukas   14:07
Mm hmm mm. 

Maddy N   14:09
You know, and then kind of look back and see whether what challenges you have, right. So when companies define ambitious goals, right?
How they can ensure that the team is fully aligned to achieve this and there are.
No gaps. 

Marc Sniukas   14:27
Yeah, but again, so I mean to to close these gaps between your strategy and execution, I would focus on these activities or functions, departments and teams really. So there, there is this work involved in, in going to that level and having discussions on that level around. OK, So what does the strategy actually mean for you if you if you stick with that idea of strategies about solving your challenges?
What is the challenge? The challenge on the next level? So what is the challenge in in product development for example, we might say, OK.
On the on the business level, you have decided to develop a new product and then the the product development team says, yeah, but we have so many other products that we’re still developing, maybe we don’t have enough resources. So the challenge becomes how do we solve our product strategy becomes, how do we solve that challenge? And then maybe it’s about aligning activities against. So you might need to stop some of the of the projects you’re working on. And actually I’m just working now with a customer where we stopped. So they had 21 projects in product development.
And we stopped 17 because they no longer fit it with the strategy and we focus on four only. Obviously, we need to have a product life cycle strategy for the other 17. How long are we going to support them and maintain them and all of that, but the focus shifts from we do 21 to we do four. But because these four are aligned with our new strategy and that’s the level of discussion you really need to have because this is where you close that gap you mentioned between.
The ambitions you have and the execution, so it all goes back to. 

Maddy N   15:59
Back. 

Marc Sniukas   16:00
How do we spend our time? You know, you know, if you if you say on the personal level, even if you say if I say I want to be fitter, I want to be more healthy, but I spend all my time watching Netflix, then it’s not going to work. Right. So how do I spend my time? And how aligned is that really with my ambitions and my my goals that I have? 

Maddy N   16:18
Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense, right. So I think the next question is more in line to, you know, the example that you’ve given, right?
So you know, our question is from based on your experience, right? What is that one mindset sift, that leader needs to make to ensure their strategies are driven right without, you know, overburdening the team, right? So what is your recommendation here? 

Marc Sniukas   16:32
Mm hmm.
So I think the biggest mindset shift when it comes to doing strategy is to to go away from and this brings us back to where we started. Go away from seeing strategy as planning.
But having more mindset of strategies about learning, you know it’s about doing something. It’s about learning what works in the market, what doesn’t work. If you do something new, insights will pop up. So it’s about watching out for these new insights and then taking that into account to.
We’ll go into the next cycle of refinding your strategy, fine tuning your strategy. Also, it’s an an iterative process of you have an idea. You try it out, you do something, you get feedback from the market, what works, what doesn’t work, you get feedback from the organisation. What are we capable of doing? What might be not be capable of doing? And then you take that into account for the next cycle of design, so to say where you become more, we have more, more granular and you become more detailed about.
Designing some elements of your strategy, you act again and you learn from that. So.
This is a big mindset shift, so going away from we have a five year plan that we need to implement which obviously or very often puts a lot of pressure and on the teams that makes them burn out because you kind of keep on pushing for achieving the numbers for example or achieving the KPI is or whatever, right. And then sticking to the plan, although things around you might change, although the plan might not have been a good plan to start with. And then if you shift into a learning mindset, then you become a little bit more relaxed about.
About all these things, because you take it with a grain of yeah, we learned some things.
And then we we go for the for the next stage. And yeah, people also become more engaged in that process because you need to have conversations with the people about what is working, what is not working. So again, you engage them more, which is going to increase the commitment, the alignment, the buy in.
And yeah, so because you have that learning mindset eventually. Your strategy will also be more successful because you’re going off going through these iterative cycles, these agile cycles. If you if you want to call it that, where you tweak the strategy and when you make it, make it work better. 

Maddy N   18:48
That’s it. No, I think this makes sense, right? This is what we all always recommend that when you, when you move from one quarter to another, quarter to right, how much you have learned in the current quarter is very important, right? Because you cannot move on to the next quarter with a baggage of so many failures without even realising how it’ll end up impacting your next quarter, right? So you know totally agree with your thoughts, right, not only they have to be agile but they also have to be learning more and more. 

Marc Sniukas   18:59
Right. 

Maddy N   19:14
I think that mindset, you know, can help not only them at top level, but definitely, you know, the one at, you know, middle management or you know below levels right. It’ll also help them upgrade their expertise. It’ll also help them in upgrading their skills and thereby contributing more and more towards strategies. 

Marc Sniukas   19:14
We had the learnings.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, definitely. I think it’s a. It’s a conversation that you need to have throughout the the organisation, right. And again, it’s also through having these types of strategic conversations with people that, as you said, you’re going to, you’re going to enable them more, you’re going to help them to think more, more strategically also. And through that, the whole organisation is going to be better at doing strategy, which is the design and the the execution as well.
But the learning is important and very often we’re just, you know, if we if we don’t hit the numbers after the quarter, then we blame everybody. Why what happened, right. But and then we push harder for the next quarter, but we don’t really take the time to to think about is there anything that we need to adjust to to make it work better. 

Maddy N   19:58
Yeah.
Absolutely. Right. Oh, this make lot of sense. Mark, I’m in, you know, total agreement to what you said, right. And this is something which we also experience it.