Strengthening Strategy Execution at a Canadian National Bank
SITUATION
- Top Canada national bank facing challenges around development and execution of strategy
- New top leader and several new players on senior team
- No defined longer term strategy—only annual profit plan
- Performance OK, but relatively slow growth rate
- Declared desire to grow the business, but low risk-taking environment leading to cost management vs. revenue growth thrust
- Competitors making moves in an uncertain marketplace
- No processes for making trade-off decisions and managing execution through the organization
- Culture of good personal relationships and avoidance of conflict
SOLUTION
- Engaged first two levels of management in a strategy development process
- Developed a strategic roadmap of priority initiatives to manage execution
- Created a “strategic execution framework” including three integrated execution teams—Management Team, Impact Committee and larger Leadership Forum
- Defined role of Impact Committee, made up of major strategic initiative owners, to recommend resource allocation decisions and develop comprehensive change management architecture
- Designed Management Team development approach including quarterly retreats, leadership style profiles, direct feedback mechanisms
- Established operating principles to define desired behaviors
- Tied leadership succession and development planning process to strategic execution and business needs
RESULTS
- Strategy adopted and supported by top firm leadership
- Strong short-term performance
- Early success in meeting more aggressive growth targets
- Increase in new product introduction rate
- Organization-wide commitment to implementing new customer value proposition
- Effective resource allocation trade-off decisions made in tough operating environment
- New two-year IT project planning system put in place
- Significantly improved alliances built with corporate support functions
- Reported changes in speed of decision-making and ability to raise and address conflicts
- Regular feedback used to assess individual and team performance against business objectives