The second half of the the book presents the author's UNLOCK methodology for addressing strategic gridlock. It contains 6 steps, with steps 2 and 3 (Understand the Full Challenge and Negociate Key Stakeholder Buy-in) as highlights. The focus on seeing the complete job to be done helps get the timeframe and effort to be more realistic, and the buy-in step focuses on how to play both offense and defense as you are communicating and implementing important changes.
Having your management team familar with these concepts will allow you to sense and discuss when you may be hitting roadblocks or not doing all the work to unlock your organizations full potential.
Highly reccomended read before you set off on your next strategic change journey.
Obviously, an inappropriate strategy almost invariably results in conflict, confusion, acrimony, perhaps operational gridlock, and worse yet, chaos. Moreover, Harper fully understands that even a fundamentally sound strategy can fail because of internal resistance by those whom Jim O'Toole describes as being captive to "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Or that strategy can become less effective or even ineffective because of market forces over which the organization has little (if any) conrol. Harper has absolutely no illusions about the complexity of these and other issues. She could easily have identified 14 or even 21 "roadblocks." Her U.N.L.O.C.K. system could have been based on 10 or even 15 principles. That's not the point. Rather, when crafting a strategy, decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) should identify and then prepare for what they perceive to be the potentially most formidable roadblocks to that strategy's success. (FYI, my personal preference is to view strategies as "hammers" and tactics as "nails.") Everyone must understand and support the strategy. What amounts to an "early warning system" is needed and everyone at least directly involved with the strategy and its tactics must be especially alert during the strategy's initial implementation.
Although I encountered no "cutting edge thinking" in Harper's book, I hold it in high regard because it fully serves the needs of decision-makers who need (perhaps urgently) a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system by which to avoid or extricate their organizations from strategic gridlock. Another major benefit of having an "early warning system" is that if the strategy is a dud, that will soon be obvious and Harper's book can assist with whatever adjustments may be necessary.
Those who share my interest in how and why even major corporations such as Ford, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's make bad strategic decisions, I urge them to check out Matt Haig's recently published Bad Brands.
Find out why strategies and initiatives that looked good during planning end up mysteriously snarled in a tangled web of persistent organizational problems ("strategic gridlock") during execution. Preventing Strategic Gridlock shows the reader how to:
· Gain insights into the common but mistaken assumptions leaders often make about their organizations;
· Apply the six principles and guidelines of organizational reality to U.N.L.O.C.K.® their company from the Strategic Gridlock cycle;
· Learn how to achieve the high-performance results that today?s high-pressure environment demands.