Strategy Deployment: The Operating Model to Run Your Strategy

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Strategy Deployment is how I help leadership teams build the capability to run their strategy: an operating model that keeps strategy and execution connected. Instead of writing a plan once a year and redesigning the organisation every few years, the strategy is made visible, tested in practice, and adjusted as the organisation learns.

What is Strategy Deployment?

My working definition is that Strategy Deployment is any form of organisational improvement in which propositions emerge from the people closest to the context. Leadership sets the direction and the guiding choices. The people doing the work figure out how to get there, and their results feed back into the strategy.

It grew out of the Lean tradition of Hoshin Kanri, but it isn’t a framework to install. Instead, it’s a way of thinking about how strategy and execution talk to each other and co-evolve, and it can sit alongside OKRs, Agile, or whatever else an organisation already uses.

Why strategy and execution drift apart

Indeed, most organisations do have a strategy. What they often lack is a regular way of running it, so the strategy and the day-to-day work drift apart. A few signs I see often:

  • The leadership team agrees on the strategy, but people elsewhere can’t say what it means for their work.
  • Decisions keep getting escalated because nobody is sure who owns them.
  • Delivery is busy and successful, but strategic work never quite gets the time. I wrote about this in How Delivery Starves Strategy in Successful Organisations.
  • Transformation programmes improve things locally without moving the results the business cares about.

How it works

The core tool is the X-Matrix, which puts a whole strategy on a single page. I use my own version, the TASTE X-Matrix:

  • True North: the orientation which informs what should be done.
  • Aspirations: the results we hope to achieve.
  • Strategies: the guiding policies that enable us.
  • Tactics: the coherent actions we will take.
  • Evidence: the outcomes that indicate progress.

The matrix also shows how these relate to each other, which is where a lot of the useful conversation happens. The tactics are where the strategy gets implemented, each one a hypothesis to try with evidence to watch, rather than a plan announced from the top.

The work then moves through catchball, where ideas pass back and forth between leadership and teams, and backbriefing, where teams play back what they’ve understood and what they plan to do. With a regular review cadence, these interactions and artefacts around the X-Matrix are the heart of the operating model, supported by clear decision rights, governance and structure. Together they keep the strategy in contact with the work. I call that Continuous Strategy.

Working with me

Most engagements start with the leadership team, building a first X-Matrix together over a few weeks: bringing disagreements into the open and agreeing on where to start. After that come optional check-ins, reviews and working sessions, with a steering workshop after the first quarter. I’m more involved early on and step back as the organisation learns to run it without me.

You can see where I’ve done this before at Rally Software. If that sounds like what you need, let’s talk through your strategy.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between strategy and an operating model?

Strategy is the set of choices about where you’re heading and how you intend to win. The operating model is the organisation’s capability to run that strategy. It includes structure, decision rights and governance, and also the cadences, interactions and artefacts through which choices are made, acted on, reviewed and revisited. Problems start when the strategy is set once a year and there’s no regular way to learn from it.

How do you translate strategy into an operating model?

In Strategy Deployment, strategy is implemented through the tactics on the X-Matrix: coherent actions, each treated as a hypothesis, with evidence showing whether it’s working. The operating model is the capability that keeps that happening: the cadences, interactions and artefacts around the X-Matrix, such as regular reviews, catchball and backbriefing, along with the decision rights, governance and structure that support them. Consequently, with that rhythm in place, turning strategy into action is something the organisation does continuously, not once.

When should an organisation review its operating model?

Usually when the strategy only gets looked at once a year, when the leadership team keeps having the same conversations without reaching decisions, or when teams can’t see how their work connects to the strategy. Instead, with Strategy Deployment, the strategy itself is reviewed and refreshed continuously, with everyone taking part, so it doesn’t wait for an annual cycle or a one-off redesign..

How is Strategy Deployment different from OKRs?

They work well together. OKRs are good at setting and tracking goals, while the X-Matrix also captures the strategies and tactics behind them and how they connect. I’ve written about this in Combining OKRs and the X-Matrix.

Is Strategy Deployment the same as Hoshin Kanri?

It comes from the same roots, and the X-Matrix is a Hoshin Kanri tool. I use the term Strategy Deployment because my approach puts more weight on emergence and learning, and less on cascading targets down the organisation.

Do we need to be using Agile to use Strategy Deployment?

No. Strategy Deployment works with whatever ways of working you have. If you are running an Agile transformation, it helps connect that work to business results, because agility is a strategy and Agile is a tactic.

What does an engagement involve, and how long does it take?

I usually start by working with the leadership team to build a first X-Matrix over a few weeks. After that there are optional check-ins, reviews and further working sessions, then a steering workshop after a quarter to look at what’s been learned and adjust. Longer engagements involve more of my time early on and a lighter touch later, until the cadence runs on its own.

Why work with an independent consultant rather than a large firm?

You work with me directly, from the first conversation to the last session. I have no prescriptive methodology to sell and no interest in becoming a long-term dependency. The goal is for your organisation to own the approach and carry on without me.

All my articles on Strategy Deployment

In this structure, the articles below follow book chapters, from why Strategy Deployment matters to putting it into practice.

For more information on Strategy Deployment and X-Matrix training, see the Services page on X-Matrix – Making Strategy Visible

1. The Need

The Challenge

Implications for Agile

2. Strategy Deployment

The Intent

The Approach

The Work

3. The TASTE X-Matrix

The X-Matrix

True North

Aspirations

Strategies

Tactics

Evidence

Correlations

4. Implementation

Getting Started

Other Frameworks

5. References

Banner image: pen and book by Jose Carlos Norte