Office of Strategy Management: A Day In The Life of an OSM Leader

A best practice for closing that gap between strategy and execution is the establishment of a corporate-level Office of Strategy Management (OSM) – responsible for overseeing all strategy-related activities ranging from formulation to execution. If you’d like more explanation regarding the definition of an OSM, how one might be established and when an OSM is needed: please read the article titled “Defining the Office of Strategy Management”. In this segment, we will examine a typical “day in the life” of a leader in an Office of Strategy Management.

What is a typical day in the life of an OSM manager?

Each day in an OSM brings its own variety of challenges. It is always fast-paced, due to ongoing quarterly operational plan refreshes and the never-ending litany of strategic programs beginning, in-flight or completing execution.

Let’s explore a typical day to see how that might look like for the leader of an established OSM. To do so, we will use a fictitious character named Bob. Bob holds the role of “Chief Strategy Officer” and leads the OSM for an equally fictitious company called Initrode. Initrode is a manufacturing company, based in the United States and operating outside the U.S. in Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Background Information

Since Bob is located in the Central time zone of the U.S., he faces a 14 hour time difference with Asia (China is 14 hours ahead). This makes scheduling meetings difficult. Almost as troublesome is the seven hour time differential with Europe and four hour time difference with Brazil. Other parts of the Latin American organization are on the U.S. Central and Eastern time zones, making them easier to schedule for calls. Time differences are but one of the many challenges the OSM faces. Face-to-face meetings amongst the full OSM team occur rarely, due to the far-flung geographies in which Initrode operates. The team’s bond is constantly tested, as the relationships of the OSM group rely primarily on video conferences, emails and phone calls.

Bob reports to Initrode’s CEO and is accountable for corporate strategy development and execution. Like Initrode’s CEO, Bob is measured on metrics related to goal attainment as well as overall company sales and profit performance. Bob is one of four direct reports to the CEO. The other direct reports are the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Operating Officer (COO).

What follows is a chronicle of Bob’s “typical” day.

Bob’s usual day is a non-stop barrage of phone calls, meetings, status update requests and dealing with dozens of urgent matters. His breaks from those activities are filled with tasks such as catching up on email and voice mail messages, trying to respond to questions, fulfill process requests and work with OSM staff regarding specific questions or problems they are having.

[7:30 AM] OSM Morning Standup Meeting

Though the sun has yet to rise, two dozen Initrode OSM leaders are settling in with coffee or hot tea – about to begin their regular morning standup meeting. They will take turns giving reports – progressing through a litany of red, yellow, green ratings that are intended to mark progress on different elements of key strategic programs.

The meeting is comprised of corporate OSM staff that are attending in-person as well as OSM country leads linked in by video conference. The discussion is marked by German, Indian, British, Asian, Latin American and Texan accents – all speaking the language of strategy, initiatives and implementation. Despite the culture and language barriers, the meeting runs like a well-oiled machine.

Bob’s agenda has each participant concisely review their accountable areas within the portfolio of programs. The morning stand up meeting is always scheduled for no more than 20-30 minutes. While that is slightly longer than a daily standup meeting might typically last, Bob uses each minute to the meeting judiciously. Bob must get updates on critical programs (which do not always vary much in status from day to day), but also delve into the nuances of projects running within those programs. Those project-level details matter a great deal to Bob. He knows that issues within projects will quickly compound to large-scale problems that have broad impacts if they are not addressed daily.

During the meeting, OSM staff will discuss schedules, statuses, variances, tasks not updated, and potential problems or integration impacts with other areas.  Action items are not worked or resolved during the meeting, they are worked outside the meeting.

The meeting starts with Bob addressing the group and asking the following questions:

– What was accomplished the previous day?

–  What is scheduled to be accomplished today?

–  What roadblocks in the way of progress?

–  What are the barriers to success for today?

– Who needs help from who in the room?

– What is behind schedule?

– Any new risks ?

–  Any old risks impacted by new changes?

–  Anything else?

If Bob is needed to mediate a problem, he puts the person’s name on the white board and promises five minutes after the meeting for the person with the issue to present their case with solutions. He knows that some of the issues will fall back on his shoulders to help mediate the barriers. In general though, Bob lets his team attempt to solve the problem so that they do not grow too dependent on him to do so.

The meeting ends with every participant recapping their schedule for the day and sharing who their backup person is for making decisions when they are unavailable due to meetings or travel. Bob’s meeting scribe has taken copious notes and those will be distributed by email and on on the company’s Internet portal shortly after the meeting adjourns.

[8:00 AM] Latin America ERP Meeting

In the large conference room, overlooking the crowded bumper-to-bumper morning traffic on the freeway, Bob’s next meeting gets underway. The topic: Latin America’s SAP Supply-chain implementation.

Six Sigma, project management and SAP terminology fill the air over the next two hours as Intitrode’s COO, CIO and OSM staff discuss various aspects of this critical program. It appears that one of the biggest challenges facing the project is cultural, with the Latin American (LA) division is demonstrating a fierce independence in regard to their implementation. This is making it hard for corporate to get synergy between the LA implementation and the other global supply-chain roll-outs.

Bob presses to make progress by conferencing in the LA General Manager and mediating a discussion related to LA’s request for several moderately complex customization’s to the model. Such one-off requests threaten to stall progress on the initiative and put Bob’s schedule in jeopardy. It is part of Bob’s role to get decisions made and ward off risks, such as timing triggers, that will begin impacting the project on a global level. It has become second nature to Bob to interpret project statuses and formulate decisive corrective action plans to help avoid potential integration impacts with other components of strategic programs.

In this instance, Bob listens intently to the GM and asks very direct questions to get to the heart of the enhancement requests. He distills information quickly to reach a conclusion that will likely have some far-reaching effects. Although he has likely reached the decision point on resolving today’s LA SAP issue, he needs more time to reflect on it and wants to discuss his thoughts privately with other members of Initrode’s executive management team…namely the COO and CIO.

[09:57 AM] An Unplanned Schedule Derailment

At 09:57 AM the vibration from Bob’s phone laying on the table gets his attention. A quick glance at the screen makes him grimace. He sees a text message from one of his managers notifying him that an OSM facilitator has become ill and has had to leave work for the day. Bob is needed to stand in as facilitator for an operational planning session in the afternoon with Initrode’s U.S. manufacturing’s plant managers.

[11:00 AM] Prep and Change Schedule for Afternoon Meeting

It is 11:00 AM and Bob has just ended the Latin America ERP meeting. Bob darts down the hallway and into his office to pull up his calendar and see what needs to be rescheduled for this afternoon. Canceling the operational planning session is out of the question, as plant managers have traveled in from around the U.S. for this afternoon’s meeting. It would be hard to get the group back together again soon enough for Initrode’s planning schedule to stay on track if today’s session doesn’t go forward.

Bob sees two meetings on the afternoon’s calendar that he’d planned to attend and a conference call that he was to moderate. All these calendar items now need to be rescheduled or covered by someone else from the OSM. He types a succinct email explaining the need to reschedule one of the meetings and sends it off to the distribution group for that set of projects. His next email goes to one of his OSM team leads, asking her to cover his second meeting and moderate his conference call. He presses send on the email and immediately picks up the phone to call her mobile phone. After sending the email, Bob realized that he couldn’t afford to wait on an answer and had to try reaching her right away. Luckily she answered on the first ring and confirmed that she could help out on both the meeting and the call.

After hanging up, Bob grabbed some markers and note cards that he would he would need for the afternoon planning session. Bob headed back out the door at 11:15 AM to meet with Initrode’s CEO for an early lunch.

[11:20 AM] Quick Lunch with Initrode’s CEO: Dan

Dan is Initrode’s CEO. He works 10-14 hours a day, including a significant amount of travel. When he’s not traveling, he arrives at work by 7:45 AM and is booked solid throughout the day. Most days, however, Dan eats lunch with either a sales person or one of his executive staff members. Today Bob and Dan are eating lunch together. Bob uses the lunch meeting as his opportunity to catch Dan up to date on activity within the OSM.

Over soup and sandwiches in Initrode’s cafe, the two discuss various dashboard readings of strategic programs. Bob uses this time to express his views on the Latin America SAP Supply-chain problem the OSM is facing and receives the nod of approval from his CEO to carry on with the actions Bob is desiring to take.

[01:00 PM] Operational Planning Session / U.S. Plant Managers

At 1:00 PM, the crowded conference room is growing quite as the session begins. Bob is filling in for one of his facilitators in an operational planning session. The goal of the meeting is to translate a half dozen strategic goals from Initrode’s strategy into the everyday execution tactics for the U.S. plant managers. It is meetings like this that will ultimately produce the outcomes defined by Initrode’s strategy. From the OSM’s perspective, operational planning is the conversion of strategic goals into execution that the OSM can then manage. From the plant manager perspective, such meetings are a balance of taking on new workload and pushing back in areas where they feel they do not have the capacity to add projects.

As the afternoon wears on, the walls of the conference room are disappearing under a cover of flip chart pages, index cards and sticky pad notes. Bob uses the final two hours of the meeting to do iterations of “Card-storming”, a technique that is very effective in beginning the operational planning stage and is used to generate an initial list of underlying projects and tasks that must be planned.

The card storming process works like this. Corporate goals are listed on flip chart pages and placed on the walls around the room.  Plant mangers then use 3X5 or 5X7 index cards to write down tasks and project ideas related to each goal – placing the index cards under the plan goal it should be associated with. In card-storming, the participants are working in teams for a short defined period of time to write down as many ideas or tasks as can be accomplished during the timeframe related to each goal topic. Bob times the breakout sessions and at the conclusion of the time period, each team presents their ideas back to the larger group.  From there, duplicate ideas are removed, and cards are categorized by topic area (grouping). All of this is done while passing no judgment on the ideas presented by the other individuals or teams.

This technique can take a lot of time to complete, so Bob carefully utilizes the time remaining in the afternoon to make sure they have fully identified the projects and where possible – the interdependencies.

[05:10 PM] Drop-in Meeting (Bob’s Office) / COO & CIO

With the plant manager operational planning session behind him, Bob returns to his office at 5:10 PM. He sits down and turns his chair towards his computer screen. At that moment, Bob hears tapping on his door and swivels the chair back around to face Initrode’s COO and CIO entering his office. Over the next 20 minutes, the three debrief on the Latin America SAP project. Bob discusses his belief that the General Manager’s customizations are valid and might well be beneficial to roll-out as global standards to the supply-chain module implementation.

While no one disagrees with Bob, all are concerned about potential impacts that such a change would have on the overall program. Estimates will need to be developed before any final decisions can be made, as all of the strategic initiatives inter-operate in a tightly dependent relationship. One or two months of delay in the SAP projects would be felt elsewhere and cause the OSM a great deal of pain.

[05:30 PM] Work on Status Report Roll-ups

At 5:30 PM, Bob takes some aspirin for his headache and turns his attention to doing status report roll-ups for his executive presentation the following day.

[06:15 PM] Lights Out

At 6:15 PM, as nighttime city lights are coming on, Bob turns off his office light and leaves for the day.

Summary

Such is the typical day for Bob in Initrode’s Office of Strategy Management. Tomorrow will be much the same in terms of solving problems, checking execution status and keeping the wheels of Initrode’s planning system in motion. Execution is a day to day battle, so Bob’s task list never gets shorter.

* * *

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