A Key and Link Between Strategy and Execution
For an enterprise to achieve its strategic goals, every process and department should be
linked. In most cases, the responsibility of the steering process falls on the corporate
steering committee.
High-level executives and stakeholders make up this committee. They’re responsible for
guiding the projects in the companies while providing insight to the lower-tier
departments. It’s important to note that the professionals involved in corporate steering
are not project managers.
Instead, they ‘steer’ the project forward to get the desired results through different
channels. These include ideation, decision making, deliberation, and recommendation.
Every organization has certain goals and objectives that must be met in a set period. The
steering process refers to the breakdown of these goals into practical parts and initiatives
that allow strategy execution at the lower levels in the company.
When done correctly, the steering process lays the foundation of a successful company
initiative or project.
On the other hand, a haywire steering committee leads to the wastage of the company’s
workforce, time, and money. Here’s why corporate steering is important and how it
provides a link between strategic planning and execution.
Why is Corporate Steering Needed?
Most tasks in a project require a high authority figure to make decisions about it. The
steering committee is given the responsibility to make these decisions, visualizing the
outcome of the project.
Here are some tasks involved in the steering process:
• Advocacy for any projects or endeavours taken on by the company
• Establishment of the parameters that define the benefits of the initiative
• Selection of teams and talents to manage the tasks
• Creation of workgroups and approval or rejection of plans
• Determination of the company’s assets that will be used for the project, including
money and people
• Prioritization of certain deliverables over others
The corporate steering committee also has to monitor the progress made by the teams in
a specific project. If they notice any room for improvement, they can propose solutions to
compensate for the shortcomings.
Conflict is inevitable in an organizational setting as many teams and people with different
opinions are working together. However, a successful steering process includes the
resolution of these conflicts to bring everyone on the same page.
How Do Steering Process Meetings Go?
While working on the strategy execution and steering process in an organization, the senior
members have certain meetings. The format of each meeting could be different, depending
on its purpose.
Here’s a standard format of a steering process and initiative management meeting:
• First off, the meeting chair reads the names of people who could not attend the meeting.
• Then, the previous meeting’s minutes are read. Keep in mind that they should have
already been emailed to all the attendees. If there was an error or an omission, you could
correct them before starting the next meeting.
• Then, the action list should be discussed. It refers to the actions that had to be taken
following the decisions made in the previous meeting. The attendees should discuss how
far the actions on the list have progressed since the last meeting.
• The project manager should present the status report to the professionals involved in the
steering process. It could be done verbally or in a written document.
• During the meeting, the steering committee should discuss important items. These
include the completion status of tasks, requests for changes in the projects, milestones
reached, fault reports, evaluation plans, and recommendations.
• Finally, the steering committee should discuss any other thing that might be of
importance.
• After this, the action list to be accomplished before the next meeting should be created.
• The chair ends the meetings by announcing the date of the next meeting.
Making Steering Process Meetings a Success
Steering process meetings can easily become chaotic and useless if they’re not managed
properly. If you’re new to the process, get help from platforms like My Single Point, where
you can learn to deal with complexity and emerge successfully.
By formulating a connected process for strategy execution, you’ll have a better familiarity
with your goals and the hurdles in the way. Furthermore, My Single Point also bridges the
gap between your objectives and the ‘enablers,’ such as resources, people, and
infrastructure.
In order to make your steering process and corporate transformation (plan) meetings a
success, you must create a list of things that have to be discussed prior to the meeting.
Here’s what you have to manage:
• Decision making
• Participation from all members
• Handling conflicts and disagreements
• Things to be done between meetings
If you haven’t already described these things, you will end up endangering your whole
initiative. Often, a single manager or executive dominates the whole meeting, leading the
rest to incline on his or her opinions rather than presenting their own.
In this way, you’ll lose the valuable input and perspective of other attendees who might
have a better idea than the vocal attended who has taken over the meeting.
You could resolve this problem by giving everyone a certain duration to speak or using a
leadership model where every team leader has a say.
Who Attends the Meetings?
The people attending the steering process and initiative management meetings have to be
pre-selected. Normally, these people are figures of authority whose important decisions
affect the organization as a whole.
When choosing the members, consider diversity. Having a ton of like-minded people in the
same room will get you little to no results. On the other hand, if the room is filled with
people who have different opinions but a shared goal, you’ll come to better decisions.
Typically, six is the ideal number of people to have at a corporate steering meeting. Make
sure that the chair of the meeting is the person who has the authority to make the most
crucial decisions in the enterprise.
If an important member cannot attend the meeting physically, get them on board through
video chat. Don’t keep important stakeholders out of the meetings.