Blog 4 Strategy Implementation

Today I will discuss the article "Good Strategy Execution Requires Balancing 4 Tensions" by Simon Horan and Michael Connerty, in reference to my time as a board member at a small art gallery and event space in my hometown. We'll call this organization Gallery One for the purposes of this blog. During my time at the organization, we had many attempts at implementing an organizational strategy and even took weekend retreats to create and assess our strategic plan. However, hardly anything we discussed had a lasting impact on the way the organization was run and the place it held in the community.

The first tension the article discusses is balancing an inspirational end-state with challenging targets. Horan and Connerty talk about the importance of having both a clear vision of the future as an organization as well as midpoint targets to get you there. At Gallery One, we often discussed aspirational ideas for what we'd like to accomplish, from groundbreaking programs we'd like to eventually run to getting national press. However, these conversations were broad and included many differing ideas, rather than comprising a collection of thoughts that could lead toward one strong future version of the gallery. These different visions of the future were split up and given loose ownership by different committees, but for the most part, they were forgotten about after the meeting. There were also no mid-point goals set to guide us toward these visions. There was no team effort implemented to reach this inspirational vision of future Gallery One.

The second tension is top-down control versus democratization of change. Top-down control can work for some large companies as long as employees lower on the org chart need to feel empowered to be decisive in their own work as well. At Gallery One, there was little to no top-down control. We only had a full-time Executive Director, a part-time Gallery Manager, and a working board comprised of volunteers. Because of this, all the help was needed wherever it came from and many decisions were made through full group conversations at board meetings once a month. Although the Executive Committee of the board ultimately had the final say, everyone had a voice that was heard in decision-making.

Tension three is development of capabilities versus pressure for results. Unfortunately, this was something that Gallery One did not excel at. As I said, the organization was still fairly small and was constantly overwhelmed with things that needed to be done. Because of this there really was no time for individual growth in the organization besides learning things on the job and under pressure to perform. Thankfully as a small organization, there was a fair amount of understanding and room for things to be completed sub-par without a large amount of damage to the organization. This also brings me to the last tension of creativity versus discipline. This freedom to learn what you're doing as your executing it for the first time is a reflection of the culture of creativity in the organization. We were always trying new programs and experimenting with new ways to market things. Although this allowed us to get a good idea of what things worked for us and what things didn't, had we had more discipline in developing a specific plan of action and sticking with that in order to reach the inspirational visions we had for the future, I think we would have been much more likely to meet those expectations for the future.