Mastering Vision to Action: The Roadmap
A business's successful execution of its aspirations and goals begins with aligning around the vision and working through a process to embed this as your purpose and make it actionable in a plan or, as I like to use the term, “Roadmap.”
As you can see in my other posts, I am a system thinker who likes frameworks; there are a few out there. I have always found that Simon Sinek's model for Why, How, and What provides context that most have seen or associated with quite quickly. And getting to a common language is essential!
In Simon's model, he talks about these three areas:
Why – How you as an organisation define your purpose and why you exist.
How – This is how you and your organisation achieve its purpose as outlined in the why.
What – This is what you and your organisation do or will do to realise your purpose.
So, with this framing, we can translate this into the four pillars I use to work with organisations to make their vision an actionable roadmap and, in doing so, support people in understanding their contribution and responsibility in achieving this purpose. Each of these four areas should inform the next and make it easy for areas of your business to articulate their roadmap for contributing to realising your vision. Your Vision, Strategy, and Objectives should speak to your entire organisation, they form your blueprint for success, and your roadmap forms the actionable response to this.
Vision – Is your organisation's long-term goal, it answers the question, “Why do we exist?” These are generally aspirational and should inspire and align your organisation.
Strategy – Forms an overarching plan for how the organisation will achieve the vision, which is answered by the question, “How will we achieve our vision as an organisation?” I like to use the SMART model, which ensures that your strategy is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Time-Bound.
Objectives – These are the specific goals an organisation needs to achieve to reach its vision. These objectives answer the question, “What must we do to achieve our vision?” These provide the focus on what will change across your business. A simple model for this is “Start, Stop, Continue.” When you land on these, the next step is to ensure these are measurable, which I like the OKR model for this (Objective and Key Results).
Roadmap – Now that we have set the stage and provided the lens on the Why, How, and What as a business, you make this actionable in the form of a roadmap. It forms your plan to achieve the objectives that align with your contribution to the vision.
Questions to guide your Roadmap creation
What are your objectives? This is related to the value you create in realising the organisation's vision. These should be evident and form part of your balanced scorecard. My top tip here is to think not only directly but indirectly – do you support other areas of the business to achieve their objectives? How can I better partner across the business to realise our vision?
What are your key drivers for success? Asking what factors will most affect your ability to achieve your objectives. These can be internal and external, such as customer demand, industry or market trends, and competition.
What are your challenges? What are the hurdles that you need to overcome to be successful? These could be in the form of constraints on technology, people, and regulations.
What resources do you need to achieve your objectives? You must ensure we have the resources and capability to deliver on our objectives and execute your roadmap. I like to break this down into “Change & Run”; this step informs your funding ask. With capability, this shouldn’t be overlooked. You must ensure you have access to the right talent or partners to achieve your objectives.
What are your measures for success? What key results will you measure? Do you have a baseline today? What indicators will you use, monitor, or need to have in place to support you in measuring your outcomes?
What is your timeline for achieving your objectives? What is a realistic timeline for achieving your objectives, and how will you measure and report on your progress?
How will you communicate your progress? Assess the existing channels, forums, and mediums for this. Your communication strategy should include internal and external.
Things to keep in mind
To make sure you have covered off on formulating a successful roadmap, I suggest that you:
Involve all stakeholders and your people in the process. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page, that you have buy-in, and the roadmap is aligned with the needs of the business and can be realised.
Less is more! One of the things I learned at NAB was to stick to a Big 5, which represents the most significant (valuable and impactful) ways in which you can deliver on your commitment to realising the strategy.
Be realistic about timeframes and resources and communicate any impacts with recommendations and/or asks early to ensure you can support your contribution to your organisation's objectives.
Be flexible and adaptable early in the process, especially as you work across the organisation to realise the strategy. Also, understand that your business environment will most likely change, so your roadmap needs to adapt.
Your measures for success are not just the outcomes, but your people's goals need to align and cascade in the form of their performance and individual development plans. They also need to know how they can contribute and be part of realising the outcomes of your roadmap.
Communicate with stakeholders and your people regularly, share Wins and work through challenges together.
I hope this helps prepare you to turn your vision into action. Start creating your roadmap today and empower your team to achieve success together.
If you need help or have any questions, reach out to me. I am also happy to help you to facilitate yours.