You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don't know how you are going to execute it, it's all for nothing!

So you know where you fit within your market and you know your core customers (down to their names). You know what things your market values and how well you (and your competitors) can deliver them now and (aspirationally) in three years time. You also know what differentiators you have now and what differentiators you want in place in three years time to make your 3 year highly achievable goal (your 3HAG) come true. You are 2/3's. of the way through the 3HAG Strategic Execution process. Now is the time to bring it all to life, quarter on quarter over the next three years.

Over the years I have put together many strategic plans over 3 years (or worse 5 or 8 years) knowing that the plan would not in reality execute as laid. Everyone involved in a strategic planning exercise like this seemed to accept this as inevitable and it probably was, you can't plan that far out, it just isn't possible. After working with Shannon Susko and her "3HAG WAY" strategic execution framework I realised we had been doing it all wrong! What we should have been doing is mapping out the key milestones that we needed to achieve, not the things we needed to do to get to the end point. This makes it crystal clear "what" we need to achieve without having to think about the "how" as that is really all about execution. This is where the concept of Swimlanes come in. Swimlanes are GOLD but they are hard as we seem to be conditioned to think in terms of activities rather than outcomes.

So what are swimlanes? Firstly, your swimlanes are tied to your differentiators. If you have 3 differentiators, you will have 3 swimlanes, if you have 4 differentiators you will have 4 swimlanes. Each swimlane is split up into 12 quarters so three years in total and in the swimlanes you put the key outcomes or milestones that map out your path to fully implementing your differentiator.

So the activity fit map below has 4 differentiators so there will be 4 swimlanes in total (the green circles).

What does a swimlane strategic picture look like? Here is one where I have anonymised the milestones.

The milestones in this picture are the outcomes that need to be achieved to realise, strengthen or support your differentiators so they probably come from the level two activities on your activity fit map (the blue circles in the Activity Fit Map - Level 2 picture above). Now unless you are building a business completely from scratch, not all of them will necessarily feature as milestones on the swimlanes; only the things that need to be achieved to bring the differentiators to life.

Key points here:

•  The quarters go from right to left rather than left to right as this is a strategic picture not an execution plan. From left to right we are starting with the end in mind.
•  Not every swimlane quarter will have an outcome or milestone, this doesn't necessarily mean we aren't working on that differentiator, it just means there isn't an outcome in a particular quarter.
•  These milestones are strategic in that they realise, strengthen or support a differentiator, tactical priorities shouldn't feature on this (strategic) picture.
•  There shouldn't (ideally) be more than one outcome or milestone in a swimlane quarter.
•  Differentiators that you don't yet have in place will probably have the most milestones.
•  An already developed differentiator might not have any milestones until year 2 or later.

The first time you build out your swimlanes you will probably find that you have tactical priorities in the first 4 quarters. This is normal as we often struggle to make the conceptual shift from tactical/operational to strategic. Don't over-think this as we will evolve and refine this (and all the other strategic pictures) as we progress month on month and quarter on quarter.

Building out your differentiated position in the market and your swimlanes is a hard process to go through and you will achieve much more in less time if you work with an experienced and certified 3HAG coach. If you would like to find out how to build a differentiated position in your market that your competitors will find hard to attack give me, Ged Roberts, a call on +61 415 534239.