Episode 171: Applying Military Tactics to Strategy Execution with Author Stephen Bungay

In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Stephen Bungay, author of The Art of Action and former Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre. Join them as they explore Stephen’s approach to strategy execution. They discuss the common struggles in strategy execution and how to overcome them in your product management team.

Stephen is an author, keynote speaker, teacher, and strategy consultant to some of the world’s leading companies. He is the former Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, based in London, and was previously the Professor of Strategy at the Ashridge Executive Education Hult International Business School. Stephen spent 30 years working in consulting, in which he was the vice-president of the Boston Consulting Group for 18 years.

You’ll hear them talk about:

03:49 - The three gaps in execution are the Knowledge Gap, the Alignment Gap, and the Effects Gap. Executing strategy involves planning and deciding what actions to take in order to achieve a particular set of outcomes- unfortunately the three gaps are always present. Organizations often react to them by adding more details and controls, which usually worsens the situation. Stephen answers each gap with military-like solutions, beginning with clarity, followed by briefing, and then intent.
8:45 - Alignment is a constant consideration for product managers. Struggles with alignment are often a leadership problem and due to a lack of clear intent. Stephen highlights the behavior patterns of senior leaders who create strategy documents and then assume their job is done, which leaves the middle managers confused about what actions to take. To combat this, Stephen’s approach is borrowed from the military’s principle of ‘Mission Command,’ which Stephen calls “leading through intent”. This is the process of aligning people around a common intent and clarifying their roles in achieving the company's goals.

27:46 - When leaders hear about the solutions to having a more efficient team and successful strategy execution, they sometimes underestimate the cultural change required to embrace this approach. Stephen understands business culture as the range of behavior patterns that should meet in an organization, which are themselves usually based on beliefs and values. He explains that to change, it depends on the current state of alignment and autonomy in the organization. In cases where there is high autonomy but low alignment, he recommends taking control back initially and then gradually giving it back once alignment is achieved.

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Previous guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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