The Value Delivery Spine
The Challenge: Bridging the Strategy-Execution Gap
In many organizations, strategic direction is clear at the leadership level, but as it moves through layers of planning, development, and execution, it often becomes diluted, misinterpreted, or misaligned. This results in inefficiencies, wasted resources, and solutions that fail to deliver their intended impact. The Value Delivery Spine framework is designed to close this gap by providing a structured methodology for translating high-level strategy into executable, high-performance capability.
The Handoff Problem: Where Strategies Lose Their Impact
Organizations frequently struggle with:
Poorly defined gaps between opportunity and execution.
Inefficient development and deployment of solutions.
Resource waste in chasing misaligned initiatives.
Loss of competitive edge due to misaligned execution.
The Value Delivery Spine provides a structured solution to these challenges by breaking down strategy execution into six critical stages while ensuring alignment through continuous oversight, governance, and decision-making mechanisms.
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The Value Delivery Model
The Value Delivery Spine framework is designed to close this gap by providing a structured methodology for translating high-level strategy into executable, high-performance capability.
The Value Delivery Stages
The value delivery spine has six stages that, if managed effectively, can supercharge your efforts to operationally align your organization to your strategy, whether the change is incremental or radical.
The Value Delivery Mechanisms
The value delivery spine is supported by a number of operational mechanisms that support completing the work in each phase.
Key Aspects of the Value Delivery Spine
Years of practical experience have led me to believe that we can establish a framework for operational improvements that supports the organization’s direction and optimize the delivered value of those improvements. That framework can be found in the Value Delivery Spine.
Value Spine Stages — The value delivery spine has six stages that, if managed effectively, can supercharge your efforts to operationally align your organization to your strategy, whether the change is incremental or radical. Those stages include:
Directional Strategy — Establishing the strategy that will buoy the organization to new heights.
Business Model Refresh — Define the business model that gives form to the organization and its efforts to pursue the strategy.
Current Commitments — Creating the big organizational commitments that crystalize the activities and operational efforts required to support the strategy. [Generally refreshed annually]
Proposed Solutions — These proposed solutions close the gap between current capability and capability needed to support the strategic directions.
Solution Delivery Programs — These programs are the consolidated, focused efforts to deliver the selected solutions to a ready organization that meets the usage and performance targets.
New State Performance — After the program delivery dust settles, this is the new operational normal that supports the strategic direction.
Operational Support Mechanisms — The value delivery spine is supported by a number of operational mechanisms that support completing the work in each phase. These mechanisms include:
Strategy & Operations [S&O] Team[s] — The team responsible for crafting and refreshing the strategy, tweaking the business model, establishing, resourcing and tracking the strategic commitments.
Program Management Office — The team that ensures that the highest priority and value portfolio of solutions are delivered to a ready organization, hitting adoption targets.
Program Teams — The team tasked with crystalizing the solutions that bridge the operations gap created by the change in strategy and deploying those solutions into the organization.
Functional Operations Teams — The teams that are tasked with managing the ongoing functional operations that support the functional mission. These operations include sales operations, product operations, supply chain operations, data center operations, HR operations, and so on.
This blog is dedicated to that value delivery spine and the operational support mechanisms that ensure the delivery of that strategic value.
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Value Delivery Spine Topics
The Operations Mission and Challenge
Translating strategy into high performance capability is a high stakes game fraught with risks at every step of the journey. Because the decisions made and efforts invested have existential implications to our organization we typically have the senior most people and those with the greatest insight participating in the efforts. But, because multiple stages and complex handoffs exist between strategy development and capability delivery, it's very easy for things to get lost in translation.
The Value Delivery Spine Framework
the methodology designed to navigate the complexities and avoid disconnects and missed targets. This framework has a stages that deliver the efforts and a mechanisms to ensure we do it effectively and efficiently.
The Stages: These are the efforts that add value to the journey from strategy to capability by using the output from the previous stage by transforming it into something more globally valuable to the organization. Each of these stages provide increasing specificity, require deep expertise that is specific to that stage, clear ownership, and clear exit criteria to have it ready for the next stage.
The Mechanisms: The horizontal activities ensure seamless transition from phase-to-phase, drive the efforts and ensure alignment and expedite decision-making within the phases.
Setting Directional Strategy
A strategy is a meta-plan for how we achieve our desired outcomes, based on the opportunity we are pursuing.
Strategy development and execution is resource intensive and requires multiple streams of intelligence and expertise. In short, strategy development is a big undertaking for any organization. We typically undertake strategy development when the stakes are high, usually existential.
Business Model Refreshes
A business model is a comprehensive plan and structure implemented by a company to generate revenue and make a profit from operations. It outlines how a company creates, delivers, and captures value, detailing the products or services it offers, the target market it aims to serve, and the operational strategies it employs.
Establishing Strategic Commitments
How do we take this inspirational idea around which we have aligned as an organization, and make it real? We need a mechanism that allows us translate the concept into actions.
There are multiple such tools available. We are going to use OKRs to explain the translation as a quick way to frame up the effort. It’s not the only way to do it.
Establishing Strategic Commitments
How do we take this inspirational idea around which we have aligned as an organization, and make it real? We need a mechanism that allows us translate the concept into actions.
There are multiple such tools available. We are going to use OKRs to explain the translation as a quick way to frame up the effort. It’s not the only way to do it.
Leading Enterprise Transformation
Transformation is challenging, high pressure work. It requires an executive aligned and sponsored effort resourced by all impacted functions. Because transformation is such a sweeping effort, it is only undertaken under extreme circumstances. Almost all transformational efforts are prompted by the organization pursuing a market opportunity or, more likely, to address an existential threat.
Framing Large Scale Programs
Enterprise programs are often cumbersome beasts. They are developed to pursue strategic objectives that require aligned but often segregated efforts that, while dependent on one another, are designed and delivered by separate teams, with their own focus and mandate. Program management ties the effort together.
Program Management involves overseeing a collection of related projects managed in a coordinated way to achieve strategic objectives and benefits not available from managing them individually. Aligns with the organization’s strategic goals and ensures that projects within the program deliver combined benefits and manage dependencies, risks, and resources efficiently.
Guiding Organizations through Change
Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It involves managing the people side of change to achieve the required business outcomes. Effective change management ensures that organizational changes are implemented smoothly and successfully, leading to lasting benefits.
The focus is on the organization and people aspects of a solution and supports planned change, whether revolutionary or evolutionary. Changes are disruptive. Limiting that disruption requires curating the effort. That curation is designed to support the roll out strategy that launches the solution.
Change Management Objectives – In the domain of organization change, change management has two objectives.
Readiness — Ensuring that all impacted parts of the organization and individuals within are ready for the change.
Adoption — When the dust settles, and the new operating model is in place, that we hit our adoption targets.
Building Resilient Operations
While all operations have common considerations, the shape and feel of an operation is based on the purpose it is supporting. Enterprise level business operations will have a very different look and feel than product development operations, which will look nothing like HR talent acquisition operations. The purpose will dictate the structure.
Building Product Operations from Scratch
A few years ago I stepped into a role leading strategy and operations for an engineering organization within a large software company. This sort of effort within engineering organizations is typically called Product Operations or ProdOps for short.
What Does the Strategy & Operations Role Do?
S&O effort provides a framework for facilitating leadership decision-making by providing curated, rapidly digestible intelligence at the moment of its greatest need. The function involves the comprehensive management of an organization's strategic planning and operational execution. This function ensures that the long-term strategic goals align with day-to-day operations, driving overall efficiency, competitiveness, and growth.
Necessary foundation. To be an effective S&O agent we need to be an expert in strategy development, operational performance, and program management.
What Does the Strategy & Operations Role Do?
S&O effort provides a framework for facilitating leadership decision-making by providing curated, rapidly digestible intelligence at the moment of its greatest need. The function involves the comprehensive management of an organization's strategic planning and operational execution. This function ensures that the long-term strategic goals align with day-to-day operations, driving overall efficiency, competitiveness, and growth.
Necessary foundation. To be an effective S&O agent we need to be an expert in strategy development, operational performance, and program management.