Business Architecture-Powered Strategy Execution

Masthead representing business architecture and strategy execution

Published

08 November 2020

Updated

30 October 2024

Published In

USAGE

Explore how business architecture can be leveraged to enable effective end-to-end strategy execution, leading to organizational agility and competitiveness.

Explore how business architecture can be leveraged to enable effective end-to-end strategy execution, leading to organizational agility, competitiveness and fulfillment of mission. These resources articulate the critical role of business architecture throughout strategy execution, how strategy and other business direction can be translated into initiatives, and how business architectrure interacts with and can be leveraged by other teams.

In This Collection

Turning Strategy Into Reality Keynote

Effective strategy execution – the ability to define clear intent and translate it into organized effort – is at the heart of business transformation and the agility that organizations need to thrive in a digital and uncertain future. In this keynote during the February 2024 SAP NextGeneration EA Forum, Whynde Kuehn describes how organizations can strengthen their capacity for cohesive, end-to-end strategy execution, powered by business architecture.

Video

How to Turn Strategy into Reality

04 April 2022

To survive and thrive, organizations must do change well. This article, published by Whynde Kuehn in Grit Daily, describes the key components of effective strategy execution.

Article

Strategy Execution In A Changing World

20 May 2022

This article, published by Whynde Kuehn in TalkMarkets, describes how organizations can build agility, resilience, and adaptability through better strategy execution, powered by business architecture.

Article

Strategy Execution: What It Takes to Make Great Transformations

12 April 2024

Effective strategy execution gives organizations the capacity to adapt and change, and it lies at the heart of successful transformations. This article describes what successful strategy execution looks like and how to move into action on the ideas.

Article

Digital Transformation Takes a Village

29 February 2024

Digital transformation is a metamorphic change for an organization. It requires every business function/discipline and role to have a holistic understanding of where the organization is, where it is going, and how it will get there – and how their role uniquely contributes to the outcomes. This article describes a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to successful transformation.

Article

How to Successfully Execute Your Business Strategy

In this very special collaboration, which combines the best of a TED Talk, a podcast, and visual storytelling Raj Ramesh and Whynde Kuehn team up to explore how to turn strategy into reality, brought to life by Raj's famous doodling.

Video

The Strategy Execution Metanoia: Translating Strategy Into Action With Business Architecture

01 May 2017

“Houston, we have a problem.” “Uh, this is Houston. Uh, say again please.” We have a strategy execution problem. Remember that whole deal in Post No. 2 about how constant change is the new normal as customer expectations increase and the external environment evolves at an escalating pace? That means the ability for organizations to get their ideas—things like strategies, transformations, innovations and regulatory changes—into action has never been more important than it is right now.

StraightTalk Post

Living The Dream: How to Integrate Business Architecture With Strategy Execution

15 April 2019

This marks the 50th installment of StraightTalk, and we’re returning to our roots. Waaay back in Post No. 3, we introduced a new vision for strategy execution and explored how business architecture could help to enable it. We called it the Strategy Execution Metanoia, because a metanoia is a transformational moment – when you see the world in a different way and can’t go back.

StraightTalk Post

A Comprehensive Approach to Strategy Execution

11 June 2022

This white paper starts with a landmark Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton to revisit some important ideas in the history of strategy execution, shines a light on those ideas, and extends and reshapes them for the future with a stronger orientation around business architecture.

Article

Chevron diagram illustrating enterprise level strategy-to-exeuction

Enterprise Level Strategy To Execution

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Detailed illustration showing graphic recording style for business architecture concepts

Leveraging Business Architecture to Translate Strategy Into Action (graphic recording version)

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Strategy To Execution & Related Team Involvement

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Figure drawing bridge walking over cliff gap

Crystal Clear – How To Translate Strategy With Business Architecture

03 August 2020

This installment of StraightTalk explores how business architecture can be leveraged to translate strategy into initiatives, including the how-to and the benefits.

StraightTalk Post

Table diagram showing how strategy is translated into initiatives

Translating Strategy Into Initiatives With Business Architecture

Download the graphic below titled Translating Strategy Into Initiatives With Business Architecture in PDF or PNG format. Revised: 2 December 2022.

Downloadable Media

Icon showing businessman and chart with yellow bubbles

Taking Initiative: How to Leverage Business Architecture for Initiative Planning

02 March 2020

Leveraging business architecture for prioritizing, scoping, shaping, sequencing, informing and rationalizing initiatives is one of the most common – and powerful – uses of business architecture. Smart initiative planning is critical to effective strategy execution, and leveraging business architecture for it inherently shifts mindsets in new ways that consider the bigger picture for the enterprise both now and in the future. In this installment of StraightTalk, we will explore just a few different ways in which business architecture can be leveraged for initiative planning.

StraightTalk Post

The Strategy Execution Metanoia: A New Approach for Translating Strategy Into Action With Business Architecture

30 April 2017

In today’s highly competitive business environment where constant change is the new normal, the imperative for unified business direction has never been more important. Yet all-too-many enterprises have siloed business practices. These isolated business units, product lines, or other organizational constructs hamstring strategic execution that in turn leads to sub-optimal customer experiences, expensive redundancy, increased time to market and reduced competitiveness. What if strategy execution were approached from an enterprise perspective instead of in silos? This essential white paper explores business architecture as a means to integrated business direction that is collectively architected, prioritized and planned from a business-driven, top-down approach. Original Publish Date: 30 April 2017

Article

Pathway diagram showing execution plan using business architecture

Creating Cohesive Strategy Execution Enabled through Business Architecture

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Diagram showing the sources of change in an organization

Sources of Change Within The Organization

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Flow-style diagram showing changes on value stream, capabilities and business architecture

Using Business Architecture for Impact Assessment

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Funnel shaped diagram illustrating value stream and capability impact analysis

Scoping Initiatives From An Enterprise Perspective With Business Architecture

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Conceptual flow chart showing the connections between strategy and execution

Connecting Strategy To Execution

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How to Deal With Strategy Challenges: Bad Strategy, Non-Strategy, No Strategy

02 July 2018

This post will focus on how to deal with strategy challenges. While there are many common challenges in this space, since we are StraighTalkin’ here, we’ll just lay out some of biggies and then get right to the point on how to deal.

StraightTalk Post

Mind The Gap: How Business Architecture Breaks Down and Bridges Silos

20 January 2020

Silos are in many ways just inherently human, but unchecked, they can become detrimental to an organization’s success. Business architecture is uniquely qualified to break down and bridge silos, as this installment explores.

StraightTalk Post

Strategy to Reality Featured in Architecture & Governance Magazine

Strategy to Reality in Five Key Takeaways

07 February 2023

Architecture & Governance Magazine features Whynde Kuehn's book Strategy to Reality and overviews the book in five key takeaways.

Article

Pie chart showing ability to leverage strategy execution

Survey: Organization Leverage for Strategy Execution

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Pie shaped chart showing four benefits of using business architecture

Four Benefits of Translating Strategy Into Initiatives Using Business Architecture

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Masthead graphic depicting business people assembling giant puzzle pieces

Partners In Change: How Change Management and Business Architecture Work Together

16 November 2020

This installment of StraightTalk explores the topic of organizational change management and how it works together with business architecture, guest starring Ken Williams.

StraightTalk Post

Diagram showing alignment of business architecture and organizational change management

Organizational Change Management Across Strategy Execution

Downloadable Media

10-Minutes with Ken Williams: How Change Management and Business Architecture Work Together to Help Organizations

Podcast

Business Architecture's Role in Strategy Execution Webinar

A complimentary webinar from business architecture industry experts Whynde Kuehn and William Ulrich, which highlights business architecture’s valuable role in enabling strategy execution and the benefits organizations can achieve as a result. It also discusses practical steps to ensure that strategies are actionable for addressing common business challenges. Webinar provided by Business Architecture Associates.

Video

Business Architecture: Answering the Call to Achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals Webinar

People from all perspectives and sectors — far beyond the realm of governments and nonprofit organizations — recognize the urgency of achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The UN SDG is a bold global agenda helping the world move beyond traditional indicators such as GDP growth and per capita income to a broader set of objectives that include well-being, environmental sustainability, and social fairness. The responsibility to contribute — and the new possibilities for doing so — is resonating with more and more individuals and organizations. How can your organization determine its involvement level and measure its results?

In this on-demand Cutter webinar, Whynde Kuehn discusses how organizations can leverage business architecture to support the UN’s SDGs. You will learn how to determine which SDGs are relevant to your organization, thereby aligning motivation with action, and how to set internal objectives and metrics to help your organization achieve its desired level of contribution. Furthermore, you will explore how to leverage business architecture across organizational boundaries to facilitate collaboration on SDG achievement.

Video

Enabling Strategy Execution: An Executive Perspective

This video from the Business Architecture Guild(R), presented by Co-Founders Whynde Kuehn and William Ulrich, articulates the role of business architecture in strategy execution. This 10-minute video provides inspiration and ideas for making the case and is also suitable to be shared directly with executives and other non-business architecture professionals.

Video

Leveraging Business Architecture: Translate Strategy into Action

This on-demand webinar explores an enterprise perspective on the strategy execution life cycle and the critical role business architecture plays throughout the life cycle. It also discusses some practical steps you can take to optimize the strategy execution life cycle and begin to integrate business architecture into it over time.

This webinar is published by Cutter Consortium.

Video

Woman speaking into a megaphone but her shadow shows her holding her index finger to her mouth, "Shhhh"

The Secret: What Business Architecture Is Really About and Why It Can Be So Hard

16 March 2020

What is business architecture really about? And why can it be so hard for others to understand its value and see what business architects see? This installment of StraightTalk aims to provide some context for what happens to many of us on a daily basis and why. The ideas shared here are just a start and should be considered as the beginning of a conversation for us to come together around messaging and a movement that can help fuel the adoption of business architecture.

StraightTalk Post