PMP Certification- Is it worth it? Is it right for you?
In last post we disussed Atomic Habits. One aspect James Clear talked about is: Making identity-based habits. I want to dive in further about this and discuss why is the ” identity” important for leading to results.
“The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits. Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.”
– James Clear, “Atomic Habits”
The book shared that there are three layers of behavior change which correlates with SIMON SINEK’S GOLDEN CIRCLE.
The WHY is the purpose, the belief; the HOW is the process and actions to achieve WHY; the WHAT is the result of WHY.
In another word, identity-based habits are the habits driven by the WHY. Those are the changes that will eventually stay. How does this relate to strategy? The purpose of a strategy is it’s WHY. The execution of the strategy is the HOW. The success definition of the strategy is the WHAT. Let us further zoom in on the WHY of a strategy in this post.
Strategy is the plan to achieve the vision. In the business environment, no matter if you are a small business owner, or a business leader in an organization, you are likely to work on strategies as part of the leadership role. The size and scope might be quite different for each strategy project. Think about the strategies that you have worked on:
- Were you tasked to execute this strategies?
- Are you unclear with why those strategies are necessary?
- Are you struggling with reaching team alignment during the strategy execution?
- When daily operation gets busy, customer projects gets urgent, does the strategy execution got pushed to the back burner and eventually forgotten?
- If any of these answers is YES, you are executing strategy as a NICE to HAVE, instead of putting this in the center of your attention. Or you can say, it just becomes on item on your “To Do List”. We all experienced that when we finish the day with our MUST HAVE to dos, for the NICE to HAVE you are always running out of time. The question is How do you define your MUST HAVE to dos? This goes to your WHY of your business, your strategy.
The WHY describes the purpose of the business ( organization). WHY = Purpose.
The purpose drives the development of the MUST HAVE to dos. If your business is focusing on sales & revenue; the to dos generating revenue are naturally becoming the MUST HAVE to dos. As time and resources are constrained, the purpose navigates the priority list. If the business has a clear purpose, the purpose driven strategies are on the MUST HAVE to do list. Those are the goals and actions that will realize the identity of the business. That is called a Purpose-Driven Strategy. The purpose of a strategy must align with the vision of the business. In another word, the WHY of strategy aligns with the Why of the business.
Once the strategy made it to the MUST HAVE priority list in the leadership team, the next challenge leaders are facing is to define clear expectations. From Simon Sinek’s famous TED talk about the WHY, he said “people don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it. ” The same applies for strategy. When leaders communicate the strategy to teams, teams buy-in with the WHY, not the action plans and results of the strategy. Without the initial buy-in from teams, it is challenging to execute the strategy successfully and to see the desired results.
Therefore, in order to clearly define the expectations of a strategy, you need to first understand the WHY, get the buy-in on the WHY, and believe in the WHY.
A Strategy with a clear WHY has a tremendous benefits for the business and team members:
- Motivating teams: Leaders are the influencers in the modern organization. For team members, talking about financial results can be short sighted, or near term focused. If that is what the leaders focus on, it can quickly create negative impact of job security and stress. A vision of a good cause motivates the team,energize them to be passionate and wanting to contribute to the cause. The result of the cause may be still the financial results. This is a much more positive way to deliver the strategy goals.
- Team alignment: Use financial results as an example, teams are not measured on the same financial targets. There are no alignment among teams. Often, due to the financial targets, teams can have conflicting interests in order to achieve targets. While purpose driven strategy have all the teams focusing on the WHY. It is a shift of focus which leads to mindset change. Teams have no conflicting goals. The numbers or targets are removed from the focus. Teams are aligned and collaborating with harmony.
- Shaping competitive strength among rivals: Using Netflix as an example, the brand purpose is creating more convenient access to entertainment. The business has changed 4 business models in 22 years. Driven by the purpose(WHY), Netflix continue to evolve its strategy execution (HOW) to achieve the results(WHAT). Netflix has been successful among its rivals. For any business, the WHY is the true north star providing direction for the HOW and WHAT down the road. Same for strategy execution, a purpose-driven strategy develops goal-focused actions which leads to results.
The key takeaway is that the WHY of a strategy is THE ONE PURPOSE that is driving the strategy execution process. The WHY needs to be defined before forming the strategy. It is the north star that is always there to point teams to the right direction. It is a common belief that eventually driving teams to arrive at the results desired. A successful strategy execution starts with the WHY.