The six action areas: where strategy touches the organization

Why six areas?

Because an action system only works as a whole, much like an ecosystem in which every part supports the others. If one part drops out, the strategy stalls, and often nobody notices at first.

That's why the six areas are not a sorting aid. They are a completeness check: once you've assigned your initiatives, you see immediately which area stayed empty.

An empty area is either a deliberate decision or a blind spot. Both are possible, but the difference needs to be said out loud. A target picture that works without any change to people does exist, it's just rare.

The order of the six areas is not a ranking. Which one is hardest for you depends on your target picture and your starting point. In a company with grown structures, most of the work sits in processes; in a fast-growing one, it sits with the people.

The assignment happens in the second strategy workshop, once the obstacles have turned into initiatives. It doesn't take long, and it regularly reveals that two groups have planned the same measure under different names.

Structures, processes and people

The two areas people think of first, and the only ones where change can be decided.

Structures and processes: what has to change in your setup and your workflows? This means both levels, the big picture and the individual units. A new sales approach through an online channel demands different processes than a classic model, right down to order processing.

Pay attention to the interfaces. Most process problems in mid-sized companies sit between two departments, not within one. That's where nobody feels responsible, because each side does its own part correctly.

The useful questions are concrete: what does your process landscape look like today? Are the workflows documented in a way anyone can follow? What would the ideal process for tomorrow look like, thought through end to end instead of department by department?

People: do you have the right team with the right skills? Do resources need to be shifted, expanded or renewed? This area often gets reduced to training. Frequently it's about something else: about roles that don't exist yet, and roles nobody needs anymore.

Culture

The area where strategies die most often. Peter Drucker is quoted as saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and the book cites him at exactly this point.

The questions are uncomfortable and can't be delegated. Is your leadership and working culture suited to reaching the target picture? How much command is built into your leadership? Do you have a culture in which someone can report a mistake without paying for it?

Culture cannot be decided. It changes through what leaders do, and above all through what they tolerate. So this area calls for a concrete change in behavior with a person attached to it, not a measure with the words "culture change" in it.

An example of what this looks like in a mid-sized company: instead of "we establish an open culture around mistakes," it says "in every Monday meeting, management reports first on what didn't work last week." That's verifiable, and it takes effect within a few weeks.

Data and IT

Nothing works today without a digital backbone, and in many mid-sized companies this is the most underestimated area of all.

The first question concerns the infrastructure: is it fit for the future? Do you need to unify your system landscape to be able to steer different parts of the business on a comparable basis at all?

For mid-sized companies, this area is often the biggest lever and the biggest disappointment at the same time. A new system rarely solves a problem that was a process problem to begin with. It just makes the same workflow faster and more expensive.

The second question is about the data itself, and it's the more interesting one. What are you actually doing with your data? Nothing, very little, or are you collecting without ever analyzing? How is your data structure built, and does the same thing carry the same name in two systems?

Software and hardware alone won't do it. A new system on top of an unclear data structure just makes the same mistakes faster. That's why this area almost always includes an initiative that settles the terminology before any tool is bought.

Innovation and partners

The two areas that decide the day after tomorrow, and the ones most easily pushed aside by daily business.

Innovation: make sure your organization engages with new ideas continuously instead of suffering from not-invented-here syndrome. The question isn't whether you want something new. It's who has time for it in their calendar and who they report to.

Partners: without openness to collaboration, the complexity of today's markets is barely manageable. Do you cooperate along your value chain? Do you have the right partners? What will you do yourself in the future, and what will you buy in?

Innovation and partners are connected. If you can't or won't build the new thing alone, you need someone to build it with. That's exactly where the partnerships arise that are more than procurement.

This last question ties directly to your target picture. Once you've committed to the capability you win with, every other capability becomes a candidate for a partnership. That connection is what makes this area strategic rather than operational.

How do you fill the areas in practice?

You create one action area card per goal. It shows the goal with its key results, and below that the six areas.

This sequence has proven itself in group work: first describe the organization's current state, then the target state, then collect the obstacles on cards, then develop solutions and assign them to the six areas. Only after that do you add owners and deadlines.

The assignment itself is the moment of insight. If five out of six initiatives land in structures and processes, you've planned a reorganization, not strategy execution.

Put one person in charge of each area. That's not the same as owning a single initiative: this person makes sure the area gets worked on across all goals, not just where it happens to be easy.

At the end, check whether an initiative shows up in several areas. That's not a mistake, it's a signal: those initiatives are the most effective ones, and at the same time the ones most likely to fall between two owners.