Stee­ring lo­gic

More and more, companies are operating in an environment that is highly dynamic and increasingly complex. To remain successful, they have to satisfy constantly changing demands. Consequences include a noticeable increase in restructuring projects, strategic reorientation initiatives and increasingly detailed refinements of business models. Our experience has shown that most newly formulated strategies are not implemented successfully, if at all.

Putting in place strategic measures requires a toolkit that supports successful implementation and continuously makes the achievement of targets transparent to management: steering logic.

Steering logic ensures that strategy is strictly translated into operational management. This is where critical key points are fixed, such as the “strong axes” of steering, local degrees of freedom or principles of profit responsibility. These are in turn broken down into targets, key performance indicators and measures, and finally assigned to responsible persons.

Defining, introducing and sustainably establishing a new steering logic are important steps for a company. They are not part of the everyday routine, yet have to be introduced while normal business operations continue as usual. Meeting this challenge depends on having fully committed managers and management systems. Moreover, the entire implementation has to take place in a concentrated and comprehensive fashion, within a limited time period – not least to avoid overburdening the company and to ensure that internal communications remain clear.

Four key steering logic questions need to be answered:

• What are the company’s key success factors? Which cornerstones of management have a positive impact and best reflect the strategy and the business model?
• Which targets does this imply and which key performance indicators can be used to measure them? Which values do the key performance indicators have to reach for the strategy to be considered successful?
• Which measures are required to attain the previously defined goal state?
• Who is unambiguously responsible for achieving the goals, as well as for steps that have to be taken and for tracking them?

In the context of anchoring responsibility in the operational side of the business, further management aspects should be reviewed for consistency of alignment. For example:

• Core processes along the value chain, with a focus on interfaces
• Organisational structure, including the definition of roles and clear reporting lines
• Goods and value streams, including allocation methods
• Information needs by division or function
• System architecture for the harmonised supply of information based on needs and transparency
• Company values and culture
• Change needs for understanding and empowering various target groups, specifically by means of internal communication and training

CTcon provides support in developing and implementing a steering logic that will help to implement strategies successfully and sustainably.

CTcon's management framework, its worth proven in many projects completed with clients in diverse industries, is always used as a basis for this work.   It holistically takes into account the components and causal relationships of corporate management.

CTcon reduces top management involvement to a small number of highly effective points of interaction by using an interview-based analytic approach, complemented by systematic workshops. The company’s potential areas of improvement are identified and a goal vision is developed. The desired result is a complete and consistent steering logic that takes into account feasibility and pragmatism. During implementation, CTcon consciously supports quick successes that directly lead to a visible result along the way to a sustainable implementation. Results obtained in this way prepare the ground for the new steering logic to be accepted.