How Business Capability Modeling Ensures Strategy Execution

Gartner's "Survey Analysis: A Business Transformation Leadership Crisis Jeopardizes Business Outcomes" revealed a number of jaw-dropping stats:

• Over 2/3 of business leaders are unclear what the business strategies are and what assumptions they are based on
• One out of two people don’t know how they should measure business results
• Over half don’t know who is accountable for producing business outcomes

These numbers make the case that a lack of strategic clarity makes effective strategy execution difficult, if not outright impossible. This is hardly rocket science. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? And if you don’t know who can help you get there, you aren’t likely to reach your desired destination.

Replace the “magic” with reality

Deciding upon a new, transcendent direction for the organization and communicating that to a couple individuals will certainly fail to achieve desired results. The blame goes immediately to the “execution” of the strategy, without leadership taking responsibility for the step in between – the translation of the strategy (in a common language) and sharing that with the people in the organization.

People form the core of any organization, and it is people who need to understand and implement an organization’s strategic vision. A business capability model can help translate strategy into execution by providing leadership with a clear view of what’s possible, and providing them with a language in which to communicate what needs to happen with the organization. In addition, the leadership team will benefit from a business capability model because it creates the rational context in which a decision was made. This is useful to refer backwards to understand how or why a decision was made, but also to look towards the future. Just like it is difficult to know when you’ve arrived if you don’t know where you are going, it is equally difficult to put together a realistic roadmap for the journey if you don’t know where you are coming from.

Business Capability Modeling with Mavim

Creation of a business strategy and supporting initiatives is only a first step towards effective transformation. In most instances, innovative initiatives require new roles, processes, technologies, skills, and resources. Yet, the new capabilities in which a company invests must contribute to stakeholder value. This is where a business capability modeling comes in. Building a business capability model will help your organization identify the capabilities (resources) that need to be combined across silos in order to achieve the desired business results.

The benefit of building your business capability model in Mavim is that you can use one, consistent language to visualize and communicate business strategy with the people in your organization. Additionally, all the information needed to assemble a full business capability model can be stored in one database, which improves data maintenance and increases the likelihood of adjusting the business capability model as your organization’s strategy and goals change.