How well are you executing your strategy?
Welcome to the Aligned Action blog. My commitment to you is to provide resources, ideas, and tools to help you create the aligned action in your organization that is required for sustained success. I welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions along the way.
I'm thrilled that my first post as a blogger coincides with the recent publication of an article from Wharton called "The Three Reasons Strategies Fail: Execution, Execution, …." The article examines several schools of thought as to why strategies fail when they get to the implementation stage.
My general view is that execution fails because the strategy process fails (or simply doesn't exist). Often, a strategy is developed by outside consultants (I know, I used to be one) and then handed off to the company to implement. Months later, the report is gathering dust on a shelf. The fatal mistake here is to confuse strategy content with strategy process. Content is the "what" of the strategy and is unique to your industry and business. Process is the "how it gets developed" and transcends any particular industry. A good strategy process does several things:
1. Engages people in debate about what has been the key driver of the organization in the past.
2. Engages people in creating a shared view of the future.
3. Engages people in debate about what must be the key driver of the organization in the future.
4. Engages people in defining the critical factors for success, in support of the key driver.
5. Engages people in creating an implementation plan with supporting metrics and milestones.
6. Engages people in ongoing accountability around their own performance.
Notice that I refer to the key driver — not drivers. When push comes to shove, every company has one defining driver that determines how they allocate resources. Often this driver is not articulated, but it really drives decisions. In a future post, I'll examine this topic in more depth.
Notice also that "engaging people" is at the beginning of each of these statements. When you hire a consultant to develop your strategy, typically none of these things happen very well. When your people are not engaged in the creation of the strategy, how can you expect them to be engaged in the execution?
