‘Eighty percent of success is showing up‘ – Woody Allen
Strategy is only as good as the execution behind it. The problem received its first major exposure in 1999 with the Fortune magazine article “Why CEOs Fail,” which identified poor execution as the culprit 70% of the time.
Most industries are defined by economic models, explicit customer expectations, and competitive structures that are familiar to everyone and difficult to change in a short period of time. This makes it extremely difficult and risky to have superior knowledge and develop a unique strategy.
The triumph over implementation thus becomes a potential competitive differentiator, with the strategy as a hypothesis and its implementation as an experiment. As results come in, executive teams learn more about what’s working and what’s not, and adapt as quickly as possible.
However, research shows that the holy grail of a successful implementation remains as elusive as ever. So why does execution fail in so many cases?
1. The strategy that is not strategy
Defined strategies are often reminiscent of the amorphous vision a the “youor be the most respected and successful company“goal setting exercises along the lines of”increase market share by growing faster than the market through the introduction of new products“; and so-called strategic goals more akin to a long to-do list. Complex PowerPoint slides, filled with buzzwords describing blue-sky goals, usually gloss over their impracticality or the fact that no one has a clue about them. how to go there
Instead, a strategy must determine which purposes are worth pursuing and which can be achieved; in other words, it should be about choice and focus. To achieve higher performance, leaders must spot relevant trends, identify the strategic issues that will have the greatest impact on future business performance, and define the resulting critical challenges. They then develop a coherent approach to overcome those challenges.
A good strategy thus becomes a bridge between challenge and action. It’s short on vision, heavy on analysis, policy, and tough-minded actions that identify the 5-6 insightful and actionable things the company needs to do to deliver substantially higher performance.
two. Lack of leadership in action
For much of the last 40 years, the focus in business has been on how to create the right strategy, which is seen as the responsibility of leaders. Most still believe that once it’s done, it’s executed. They forget to look inside the process and the implementation becomes a fait accompli since they delegate the responsibility of implementation, that is, they take their eyes off the ball. Actually, the hardest part, the implementation, is just beginning.
Two companies may have the same strategy, but each organization’s implementation is unique. Senior management must first identify what needs to be done and then guide staff members in adopting and performing the required behavior and work. In addition, they must keep the process alive: constantly discussing, monitoring and guiding the implementation. Where new focus areas are dictated by a new strategy, they become the champions or faces of change, helping staff (at all levels) to understand what the implications are for them, personally.
Seniors in organizations that successfully implement their strategies often report double the effort on implementation compared to what they spent on making it. Obviously, that requires them to free up valuable time and resources, and to avoid getting caught up in the day-to-day running of the business, potentially losing sight of their objectives to implement a strategy and, as such, taking the wrong steps.
3. Confusing change management with strategy implementation
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with change (both at the organizational and individual level), but implementation is a specific approach that drives the right actions today to deliver the strategy tomorrow. As such, change management is a flawed methodology for strategy implementation: if we keep doing the same thing, we’ll keep failing and the strategy will fail.
While strategy making is about making the right decisions, implementation is about taking the right actions and it is the role of top management to translate the strategy into daily action. Their biggest blind spot is not recognizing that implementing a strategy requires a change in daily activities across the organization. Too often, little attention is paid to whether staff members are taking the right actions, that is, those that drive implementation. Leaders are responsible for identifying what is no longer important to the business from the old strategy and what is key to the new strategy—that is, the actions they don’t want staff members to do anymore and the ones they want them to do. differently or start doing.
Thirty years ago management was all about control and change management was designed as command and control. Now, most companies have moved towards empowerment and teamwork. The challenge then lies in putting into practice new models that can go against what the organization is currently doing and stop doing what doesn’t work, they must take the right actions. Many leaders use change management out of ignorance and end up taking the wrong steps.
4. Failure to deploy the necessary resources
Many companies view strategy and operations as two separate activities. Once the strategy has been defined, everyone goes and runs the business in the same way as before. Managers fail to reallocate resources from activities that are no longer needed to the higher priorities that are now critical to long-term success.
Organizations often focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. Line managers, who can choose between achieving short-term financial gains (which impact their bonuses) and allocating resources to problems that will impact the organization in the long-term (when they’re gone), will be quick to choose.
Companies need to institutionalize the connection between strategy, operations and objectives, as well as the consequences on performance. This creates a continuous thread to carry strategy back to the organization through the budget process, to focus on long-term, high-level strategic goals rather than short-term, quantifiable goals.
As misaligned companies report weaker financial results than their peers, the stakes are high. Doing it, doing it well, doing it better than the competition is far more important than dreaming up new visions for the future. All great companies outperform their competitors day after day.
