State of Journey Management

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Practice area 7

Out of 9

Identifying strategic opportunities across Journeys

Identifying strategic opportunities across journeys includes the activities, methods and tools used to analyse evidence and performance data to uncover growth areas, operational inefficiencies, and emerging risks where organisational strategy must adapt. This practice area includes rebalancing how value, resources, and effort are distributed across internal and external stakeholder relationships. It also encompasses creating targeted dashboards, reports, and communication assets to demonstrate tangible benefits and track the realised value of projects or initiatives over time.

What activities, methods and tools make up this practice?

Survey respondents first rated the relevance of each practice (0–5, from ‘not relevant at all’ to ‘very relevant’). For practices scoring 3 or higher, respondents scored their organisation’s effectiveness in applying them (0–5, from ‘not effective at all’ to ‘very effective’). The chart above shows both the range and average scores for relevance and effectiveness across each practice.

Avg relevance 2.01–3.98 · Avg effectiveness 2.67–3.72

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Communications

Identifying optimisation and risks

Demonstrating and tracking realised value

Identifying growth and strategic opportunities

Optimising stakeholder value and relationships

RelevanceEffectivenessAverage

Insight

Over time, organisations become significantly better at identifying operational inefficiencies, improvements and risks, as well as tracking the value of projects and initiatives

An organisation's effectiveness in leveraging journey evidence to identify operational inefficiencies, improvement opportunities, and operational risks improves substantially across practice stages. Emerging practices rate this capability at an average of 2.97 out of 5 (between slightly and moderately effective), whereas advanced practices score 4.90 out of 5 (between very and extremely effective). Similarly, using journey maps, dashboards, and performance evidence to communicate outcomes and track value realisation across projects and investments increases from 2.99 out of 5 (slightly to moderately effective) among emerging practices to 4.00 out of 5 (very effective) for advanced practices.

Insight

Over time, organisations become significantly better at identifying operational inefficiencies, improvements and risks, as well as tracking the value of projects and initiatives

Insight

Over time, organisations become significantly better at identifying operational inefficiencies, improvements and risks, as well as tracking the value of projects and initiatives

Insight

Optimising stakeholder value and relationships is hard for everyone, regardless of practice stage

Organisations consider using journey insights to reassess how value, resources, and effort are distributed across internal and external stakeholder relationships moderately relevant, averaging 3 out of 5 (moderately applicable). Effectiveness in this area is low, scoring 2.69 out of 5 (between slightly and moderately effective). These practices have the biggest gap between relevance and effectiveness, even for advanced organisations. Lifting effectiveness requires influencing mental models and challenging strongly held beliefs, but is strong tied to entering new markets or building new products and services.

Insight

Optimising stakeholder value and relationships is hard for everyone, regardless of practice stage

Insight

Optimising stakeholder value and relationships is hard for everyone, regardless of practice stage

Insight

Communicating the tangible benefits and outcomes of projects, initiatives, and capital investments is valued but hard to master

Developing and maintaining supplementary assets such as dashboards, reports, and presentations that use journey data to articulate the tangible benefits and outcomes of projects, initiatives, and capital investments proves the most challenging to execute effectively across all practice stages. Relevance increases steadily from 3.61 out of 5 (between moderately and very applicable) for emerging practices to 4.43 out of 5 (between very and extremely applicable) for advanced practices. Despite this growing recognition of its value, the gap between relevance and effectiveness remains persistent for every practice stage.

Insight

Communicating the tangible benefits and outcomes of projects, initiatives, and capital investments is valued but hard to master

Insight

Communicating the tangible benefits and outcomes of projects, initiatives, and capital investments is valued but hard to master

Methods, tools and activities that make up this practice area

Identifying growth & strategic opportunities

Using journey evidence to identify new sources of customer or business value, emerging opportunities and areas where organisational strategy may need to adapt.

Identifying optimisation & risks

Using journey evidence to identify operational inefficiencies, improvement opportunities and potential risks or points of failure.

Optimising stakeholder value & relationships

Using journey insights to reassess how value, resources and effort are distributed across internal and external stakeholder relationships

Communications

Building additional assets and tools (such as dashboards, reports, presentations etc) using journey data to communicate the tangible benefits and outcomes of projects, initiatives, and capital investments

Demonstrating & tracking realised value

Using journey maps, dashboards and performance evidence to communicate outcomes and track the value delivered by projects, initiatives and investments over time

What challenges do organisations experience with this practice?

The following challenges summarise the core themes identified across participant interviews. Survey participants rated the frequency of each challenge. The graph below compares average scores by different stages of practice:

The following challenges summarise the core themes identified across participant interviews. Survey participants rated the frequency of each challenge,
with average scores compared by practice stage below.

Emerging practicesEstablishedLeading

Insight

Conflicting planning cycles is the most frequent challenge at every stage

More than half of respondents (54%) face challenges that arise from straddling different strategic planning approaches that conflict with journey frameworks or data, often or very often across every practice stage.

Insight

Conflicting planning cycles is the most frequent challenge at every stage

Insight

Conflicting planning cycles is the most frequent challenge at every stage

Insight

Half of respondents experience most of these challenges often or very often

Almost half of respondents (49%) frequently encounter three interconnected strategic obstacles, rating them as occurring often or very often. These comprise the absence of a clearly defined strategy or unified success metrics to align journey initiatives with organisational goals, difficulties in challenging entrenched assumptions about the strategic value and priority of stakeholder relationships, and limited traction when attempting to influence leadership to reprioritise existing capital roadmaps in favour of journey-based opportunities.

Insight

Half of respondents experience most of these challenges often or very often

Insight

Half of respondents experience most of these challenges often or very often

Insight

Advanced-stage organisations experience challenges related to defining and measuring value, and mental model resistance as the most persistent

Advanced-stage organisations report that they experience these two challenges frequently. Establishing consistent definitions and evidence across the business for commercial, operational, and human-centred value (including ROI and efficiency gains) scores 4.00 out of 5 (often), while difficulty challenging strongly held beliefs regarding the strategic value and priority of stakeholder relationships scores even higher at 4.14 out of 5 (between often and very often). These reflect how Journey Management practices are challenged by the organisation's mindsets.

Insight

Advanced-stage organisations experience challenges related to defining and measuring value, and mental model resistance as the most persistent

Insight

Advanced-stage organisations experience challenges related to defining and measuring value, and mental model resistance as the most persistent

Challenges that organisations experience

Defining & measuring value

Challenges with establishing consistent definitions and evidence across the business for commercial, operational and human-centred value, including ROI and efficiency benefits.

'North star' or strategic ambiguity

The absence of a clearly defined strategy or unified measures of success, making it difficult to align journey initiatives with organisational goals

Conflicting organisational planning cycles and practices

Issues that arise from 'straddling' different strategic planning approaches that conflict with journey frameworks or data

Investment Inertia

Difficulty influencing leadership to reprioritise existing capital investments or roadmaps in favour of identified journey-based opportunities

Mental model resistance

Difficulty challenging strongly held beliefs regarding the strategic value and priority of stakeholder relationships

Source: State of Journey Management survey

Other practice areas to explore

Practice area 1

Practice area 2

Practice area 3

Practice area 4

Practice area 5

Practice area 6

Practice area 7

Practice area 8

Practice area 9