This blog is a transcription of our latest ayeQ Executive QuickCast: “Strategy Automation: Aligning and Executing Strategy across Remote Teams.” Tune in here if you would rather listen to the audio version.
The topic of this post is aligning and executing strategy across your remote teams. We’ll also cover how an automated strategy execution platform is a key enabling factor to ensure the success of those teams – and your organization as a whole.
Initially, we might have felt like managing remote teams was a fleeting symptom of the pandemic, but we are anticipating that a more remote workforce will be an enduring legacy of COVID-19. It’s time to prepare to excel in this environment.
First, let’s talk about Strategy Execution in general. To align your leadership team on strategy, you first have to articulate what you’re aligning around. What are you trying to accomplish? If you are a high-growth business, chances are, you never have enough resources to do everything you would like to do. Add to that the financial and human resources crunch that we’re all facing in our current environment. ayeQ helps you define what you are going to do, and what you are NOT going to do. This is an essential discipline of high-growth organizations.
And once that’s done, we break down the annual strategy into quarterly objectives – creating meaningful, tangible steps that show progress towards a larger goal. We define the HOW we going to get this stuff done. What’s the timeline? Who’s responsible? What exactly do we want to happen?
Then we streamline leadership team meetings. Regardless if your team is remote or not, the time your leadership team spends together should be highly productive and focused on strategy: strategy meaning the things you need to do DIFFERENTLY to change your rate of growth. That’s part of the ayeQ philosophy. Your leadership team meeting is likely your most expensive meeting of the week – you have your most experienced minds (and your most expensive resources) together. It’s important to drive continuous alignment during team meetings – and spend time together on things that will move the company forward.
This is where systematic workflows enable focus – using the strategy framework previously defined, all progress updates and report outs from teams are within the context of strategy. We create an environment where the leadership team is constantly solving problems that are strategic in nature. And when we get together for meetings, we make sure we’re reporting out and collaborating on strategic issues – and strategic issues only, not the tactical work.
ayeQ actually synthesizes team members’ input and progress into a focused agenda that keeps the pace and momentum of the team meeting. We start with significant updates, then we review success metrics, then we look at overall progress on strategy – identifying areas where we may need support and collaboration – then we problem solve strategic issues that are identified by members of the team. All the while, we’re automatically capturing action items and new issues that need to be solved.
When the majority of the leadership team meeting is spent on solving problems collaboratively, the transformation is quite dramatic – not only in the probability of successfully achieving your strategic objectives, but the whole energy of the meeting changes from one leaders dread to one leaders can’t wait to get to.
Now, consider almost all of us are remote given the pandemic. This becomes even more important. We’re all zoomed out. Being on back to back virtual meetings can be exhausting. It’s hard – illustrating the importance of having these guided workflows to automatically drive focus and make meetings efficient, effective, and actionable – all while keeping our team members accountable.
Companies that adopt the ayeQ strategy execution process quickly achieve dramatic results. We’ve seen over 200% growth in new subscription sales pipeline in 6 months, a 10% increase in contract value, a 400% increase in marketing campaign responses in just 3 months. We’ve also seen over 100% growth in annual bookings year over year, and visionary positioning on the Gartner Magic Quadrant… just to call out a few. In every case, we’ve seen accelerated, predictable growth. And importantly, we see a shift in the culture itself – to one of collaboration, inclusion, and empowerment.
To recap, how does ayeQ’s Strategy Automation capabilities help B2B leaders to run their teams with purpose? The platform helps you:
- Clearly articulate your strategy
- Define your success by measurable results
- Create achievable quarterly plans
- Keep weekly execution and team meetings focused on key results
- Hold each other accountable
- Keep strategic progress front and center
That’s essentially our strategy management philosophy, and it is built into the ayeQ platform to automate and streamline it. The philosophy itself isn’t groundbreaking – you’ve probably heard of other methodologies that get at the same things: rocks, basecamps, success metrics, scorecards, and so on. ayeQ is different because we support this proven methodology with technology that’s specifically designed to ensure your success. Think of it as creating and managing your strategy faster and easier, and keeping your teams – especially your remote teams – focused on accelerating growth.
We would love to hear what’s working and what’s not working in your organization as you are adjusting to more to remote collaboration.
You may also find our Executive Guide on Strategy Execution helpful. The Executive Guide covers more about the strategy loop, strategy execution essentials, how to guide leadership team behavior, common pitfalls to avoid – and most importantly, how to speed up the strategy loop. Click here to access it.
