For her first blog in this Strategy series, Lee-anne Knight explained what strategy is and why it’s so fundamental in the success of a business. Now, Lee-anne shares how you can start building your own strategy.
Did you know that 74% of executives are concerned that they have not translated their strategy into tangible actions? Did you also know that only 35% of those executives believe their strategy is going to lead them to success?
What’s going on?
While we know having a solid and inspiring strategic vision is great for rallying the troops and stakeholders, it’s not what gets you to your destination. So, how can you create tangible actions and a plan to help you deliver on your strategy?
The answer is with a robust planning framework.
And there is no better framework to start with than Salesforce’s V2MOM, which stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures.
V2MOM: a robust planning framework
Before we discuss how you can utilise the V2MOM framework, let’s take a look at how the V2MOM method works. To give you some context, V2MOM is the methodology that helped grow Salesforce from a four-person company to one with over 50,000 employees globally. As our Founder and CEO Marc Benioff said: “Success depends on constant communication and complete alignment – we’ve been able to achieve this through V2MOM.”
Has this strange acronym piqued your interest yet?
At Salesforce everyone creates a V2MOM, from Marc Benioff down. It provides transparency and alignment, which in a matrix organisation can be somewhat of a challenge! From an alignment perspective, the V2MOM method allows every employee to clearly communicate what they plan to achieve each year and how. Updated yearly, the V2MOM keeps us all connected as we conquer the year ahead.
From a strategy perspective, the V2MOM framework is just as robust in building a strategic plan. The beauty of the framework is it can span multiple years, and can be an instructive reference and checkpoint to ensure you’re holding your course. That doesn’t mean things can’t change along the way; important changes are discussed, agreed, and strategically referenced in the V2MOM.
Building a strategic V2MOM
Now that you have a better understanding of how the V2MOM method works, let’s dive into how you can use the V2MOM to build your own strategy framework that will lead to a successful delivery of your vision.
Vision: What do you want to accomplish?
A clear vision is a great starting point for building your strategy – it’s the encapsulation of the big hairy goal you’re aiming to achieve. The vision should be bold, clear, inspiring and importantly, short! If I can’t understand your vision without you explaining it, then go back to the drawing board. For more practical tips on creating a strategic vision, take a look at Gamestorming’s Cover Story exercise I mentioned in my first blog.
Values: What are the principles that matter?
Let’s be honest: How many of you have read a company’s values and thought they were fluff? Company values are not just ‘nice to have’, they guide us in our everyday decision making and tradeoffs. Values can be what keeps stakeholders engaged, just as they keep us all honest about the intent and impact of the work we’re doing. It’s why it’s so important to be strategic when it comes to determining the values that will help build your strategy. Don’t let them be fluff!
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are the top three values that are key to the success of implementing my strategy?
- What values are core to my organisation and how we work?
- Are your strategy values aligned with your organisational values? Do they work in harmony or are they counter-intuitive?
- Are these values clear and can everyone in the organisation uphold them?
After answering these questions and you find there is misalignment, you will need to review your strategy values. Remember, be holistic with your approach and allow your values to build on one another.
Methods: What are the actions needed to achieve the strategy?
Here’s where you can outperform those executives who weren’t sure how to turn their strategy into tangible actions. Methods are really where the rubber hits the road, outlining the key ‘chunks’ that start to form the strategy. Or in other words, how you are going to achieve the vision.
For example, if NASA’s vision was “to put the first man person on the moon”, the methods could have included:
- Forming a team with the right expertise
- Finding the right location for launch
- Engaging other countries and teams for knowledge sharing.
Methods allow us to break the work down into manageable pieces, articulating the how and providing clarity on what each of the chunks is focused on delivering. It’s what leads people and strategies to success.
Obstacles: What stands in your way?
The value of a roadmap is not just knowing where you’re going, it’s having a view on what might stop you getting to your destination. Being able to plan for potential challenges before they arise, means you know how to deal with them when they manifest – saving a lot of future headaches. Although, not every obstacle is identifiable – COVID-19 is a perfect example of that – however, getting into the habit of thinking about and planning your way around obstacles builds the strategic thinking muscle.
Heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s officially known as the Paretto principle, and in this case, it means 20% of obstacles will cause 80% of the roadblocks you’ll encounter on a typical strategy journey. When the unexpected does happen, the muscle built discussing and identifying obstacles provides a fast path to escalate out of the challenge when your strategy strays off the path.
Measures: Planning for success
Every step in the V2MOM process leads to this final destination: ROI. Measures challenge us to call out, right from the start of our journey, what success looks like – and holds us to it. Without having a clear perspective of what you’re aiming for, you won’t know it, much less celebrate it, when you’re at the winning post.
A final word on V2MOM
The V2MOM is a great tool to use in a collaborative way, ensuring stakeholder engagement and buy-in right from the start. But executive ownership is key – the executive owner has to and must hold everyone accountable to the final plan.
Just as with Gamestorming’s vision exercise, building out your strategy roadmap is not a singular activity. At Salesforce the V2MOM is a living document. Reviewed on a regular basis, providing a level of accountability that is perfect for the ‘test, revise, deploy’ frameworks necessary to build the roadmap to deliver a successful strategy.
Need help writing your V2MOM? There’s a trail for that! Take our Write a V2MOM trail over at Trailhead.
This post originally appeared on the A.U.-version of the Salesforce blog.
