What Is Strategy Evaluation?
Strategy evaluation is the process of analyzing a strategy to assess how well it’s been implemented and executed. A strategy evaluation is an internal analysis tool and should be used as part of a broader strategic analysis for the organization when making decisions about your strategy.
Typically, the strategy evaluation process involves answering questions such as:
How much progress have we made towards our Vision?
Are our Strategic Focus Areas still relevant?
Which of our Objectives have we completed?
Which Objectives are no longer needed?
Do we have sufficient Projects to deliver incomplete Objectives?
Are our KPIs still effective for measuring progress towards our Objectives?
Where we fell short of our targets, why did this happen?
At the very least, you need to evaluate your strategy twice a year – or better yet, every quarter. Even if you feel as though your existing strategy is ‘too far gone’ and needs a fresh start, you’ll want to perform a thorough strategy evaluation of what went wrong last time around.
The mistake that people often make when it comes to strategy execution, is thinking of their strategy as a linear set of steps. I’m sure you’ve all seen those PowerPoint slides with the strategy running from left to right on the page?
In reality, strategy is a circular process of constant iteration and evolution. A good strategy should never really ‘end’. Rather, it should morph into something more ambitious and sophisticated as goals are met.
Strategy Evaluation Process
It may sound counter-intuitive but ideally, you’ll be kicking off your strategy evaluation process back in the planning stage. Strategy evaluation is essentially the process of figuring out:
What did we do well?
How can we improve upon what we did well?
What did we learn about ourselves and the environment along the way?
One of the best ways to answer these questions is by setting effective KPIs in your planning stage. We’ll look at an example:
Let’s say that your vision is “to become the number one provider of strategy software in the world.”
Then let’s say that you have a focus area which is “Becoming the primary source of strategic knowledge on the internet”.
To be able to effectively evaluate progress, you’re going to need a KPI of some kind. So you might set a KPI of “Achieve a top 5 Google search ranking for 80% of the most common strategy search terms.”
Right away when you kick-off your strategic planning process, you’ll be able to assess:
Did we meet our KPI?
Why did we fall short?
Was this even the right KPI?
That last point is critical – but more on that a little later.
