When the rubber hits the road: how to execute your strategy successfully
How successful was your organisation in accomplishing its last strategic plan? The statistics are grim and unsurprising because the situation is known to many leaders.
Advertisement
Research shows that 60 to 90% of organisations fail to execute their strategies successfully. Once, I approached to support an organisation to prepare a new plan.
I wanted some context, so I asked what happened to the previous strategy. The leader admitted that they did nothing after the ink dried on the document.
They continued business as usual despite the new strategy. If organisations could execute half of the plans they develop, their stakeholders would be much better off.
There have been so many unsuccessful attempts at strategy execution that some leaders believe committing resources to developing strategy is useless.
The above posture has compounded an already dire situation as many organisations do not commit meaningfully to the strategy development process.
One leader told me, "Folks tend to forget the outcome of the strategy retreat after a week of work". The above statement is a sobering reality of ineffective strategy development processes in organisations.
Since I have extensively shared the strategy development process in my previous articles, I will focus this article on execution.
I want to address two main obstacles to execution, which I believe lie in the strategy development process and end with three leadership practices that accelerate execution:
Do not celebrate success too early, even when you have succeeded
There can be several reasons why the team would like to celebrate a successful strategy retreat. Possibly, the team finally made time to discuss critical issues they had swept under the carpet for a long time. Or the team regained its focus by agreeing on the essential outcomes it must pursue.
Sometimes, the conversations addressed the tensions that were mounting or repaired broken relationships between internal stakeholders that had affected teamwork and the delivery of critical outcomes.
These are worth celebrating, but we must also recognise that a successful strategy retreat is the beginning of the strategy journey. The strategy document does not mean anything until leaders take the strategy to the frontline where execution happens.
The retreat is not the outcome; it's a critical step in the journey.
Do not ignore your organisational context for execution in the strategy-making process stage
Leaders who develop strategies without considering the context for execution make their plans prone to challenges during execution.
Anytime a leader says: "We are good at developing strategy, but our challenge is the execution", it's evident that this leader does not fully appreciate what strategy is.
Suppose “execution” is the challenge within your organisation. In that case, your plan should be to develop actions that enable your organisation to overcome this obstacle to successful outcomes called “execution”.
Your strategy development process must recognise the “elephant in the room”, especially if the issues are within the organisation's influence and control.
The strategy development process must consider the leadership and management practices required for effective execution.
Accelerate execution by embracing change and accountability
Implementing a new strategy is a change effort. A new plan requires the organisation to make different choices to accomplish its mission.
The new strategy affects organisational design, product and service offerings, resource allocation, measures of performance, management practices, capability-building requirements, etc.
Advertisement
Changing behaviour and ways of working is always difficult, so leaders must not assume that the team will make the necessary changes as quickly as possible.
Leaders must create the conditions for the transition to be smooth and provide support to help team members adjust and thrive under the new strategy.
A study by Robert Kaplan and David Norton suggests that only a few employees understand their company’s strategy.
Also, 85% of leadership teams spend less than one hour monthly on strategy and 50% spend no time.
Advertisement
Tom Peters, the celebrated management guru and author, noted two decades ago that many leaders fight fires and do not focus on critical issues until it's too late.
Successfully executing a strategy requires discipline and focus.
Taking these three simple (though not easy) actions below accelerates the execution process for every leader.
Help team members to appreciate the new strategy and apply it in their context
Leaders must communicate more effectively when sharing a new strategy with the team. Take the time to explain to as many team members as possible how the new strategy affects their work and actions.
Advertisement
Great leaders enable team members to link their efforts and daily tasks back to the mission by giving examples of the changes required at every level and how they support the new strategy. No leader can over-communicate when it comes to sharing a new strategy.
Every meeting with team members at the frontline is an opportunity to explain why the new plan is essential, what’s changing, what’s not, and how their efforts will contribute to successful execution.
Focus every leadership meeting on the new strategy
Use all leadership team meetings across the firm to discuss progress on the strategy and identify issues that must be addressed.
Regularly reviewing the themes and action items keeps them front of mind and allows for mid-course corrections before a problem becomes a crisis.
Leadership teams must focus the usual monthly meetings on the new strategy and use it as an example of how to review the performance and progress of activities within the organisation.
Leaders must build the capacity of managers to run effective meetings and demand that managers at all levels demonstrate how their actions, activities and projects support the achievement of the strategy.
Provide regular updates and celebrate progress across the organization
By providing frequent public reports on progress, sharing and celebrating accomplishments and discussing issues that disrupt the plan, team members can see their progress and what further changes they need to make.
Providing accountable leadership that makes the organisation agile and responsive to changes accelerates strategy execution in many organisations.
Be of good cheer!
The writer is a Leadership Development Facilitator, Executive Coach and Strategy Consultant, Founder of the CEO Accelerator Programme and Chief Learning Strategist at TEMPLE Advisory.
The mission of The Leadership Project is to harvest highly effective leadership practices and share them in a manner that other leaders can easily incorporate into their leadership practice.
If you have an idea or leadership practice to share, kindly write to programs@thelearningtemple.com. Until you read from us again, keep leading…..from leader to leader, one practice at a time.