1. How to Make the Most of Your Company’s Strategy
The art of translating top management’s aspirations into concrete action on the ground
- Top management’s ideas become ambiguous as they are transferred to the general employees.
Strategy Briefinghelps managers…
clarify these complex goals and performance measures
encourage employees focus on specific objectives, in what order of priority.
set parameters for their workers’ level of freedom for independent choices.
→It‘turns lofty strategic goals into a clear blueprint for execution’.
Step 1 - State What You Are Expected to Do and Why
“Set up a low-cost R&D center in Asia.By introducing new, less expensive offerings, the
company hoped to fend off increasing competition from cheaper rivals.”
Task (What) Purpose (Why)
To significantly reduce time to market for In order to help aggressively grow our
development, enhancements, and support of revenues and increase our margins.
high-quality products to our customers in a
cost-effective manner.
Still too broad and unrealistic.
Step 2– Revise the Intent in the Context of Company’s Situation
1. Poor economy + competitors eating up market share
2. No future without market share
3. New product line needed to deliver outstanding customer service (key to maintain market
share) at acceptable margins.
4. Not enough time

2. Two Levels Up (Corporate)
What Why
To transform the company within the next In order to deliver superior service and
three years. financial performance.
One Level Up (Technology Group)
What Why
To develop and support a coherent product In order to allow sales and marketing to grow
line that is easy to service. revenues.
Final
What Why
To accelerate delivery of critical products to In order to enable sales channels to halt
market. market share erosion by year-end.
“If we give ourselves a target we can’t achieve, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.”
Step 3– Determine which measures best indicate whether you’re achieving your
goal.
Sometimes, the activities you see as most appropriate to your intent aren’t the ones you are
actually assessed on.
There are mainly two categories in measurements:
- to see how well the company is doing to reach its goal,
- to see how much the company is losing.
Successful measurements stem from individuals knowing what their tasks should be.
Step 4– Define the Tasks Implied By Your Intent
Define, prioritize, and cut tasks.
Prioritize by the order from the largest impact on the company’s overall intent to the least.
Step 5– Define the Boundaries

3. What are constraints?
- Though there is no direct control over these constraints, defining them tells who to contact to
solve them, both inside and outside the organization.
What range of freedom is given?
- Though it sounds paradoxical, boundaries give employees freedom. If they are not given
boundaries, people consider ‘difficulties’ that they are expected to overcome as boundaries.
The Rollout
Strategy briefing is most successful when it is held throughout an organization. As the director
assigns his/her intent, the subordinates’“why” will become the director’s “what”, and the
process will continue until no further analysis is necessary.
→A company’s strategy is broken down into a cascade of discrete but linked elements that give
a clear view downward toward actions and upward toward the strategy, and align functions
across the organization.
Back-briefing also helps.
→The unit doing the back-briefing checks its understanding of the direction it has received or
worked out.
→ Superiors gain clarity about the implications of the direction they originally gave and may
revise it as a result.
→It provides an opportunity to ensure alignment across the organization as well as up and
down.