The Strategy to Execution gap
A picture is a thousand words. Why is it that this one echoes so strongly when we see it?
Because the gap between strategy and execution is very real, and the challenge of going from a great strategy to great execution of it, is often spectacularly underestimated.
Here are some of the reasons why:
Defining a strategy that will actually work is hard:
The pyramid of ignorance (Sidney Yoshida) suggests that only 4% of an organisations front line problems are understood by top management.
Therein lies the challenge of understanding the difficulties a new strategy may face when different parts of an organisation try to adopt it.
To find true alignment, strategy definition must be dynamic and involve a broad range of stakeholders at all levels to have a chance to be successful.
If we don’t make that effort, the strategy will eventually face too much resistance.
It must be ”THEIR STRATEGY”, NOT ”YOURS”
If a strategy comes from the top in a form of a waterfall of slides (I’ve seen plenty of examples of 200 slide presentations in my career) there’s a good chance it will be forgotten pretty quickly.
It’s much more important to set a clear direction for the organisation, then let every part of it say how they will contribute to taking the organisation there.
By taking this approach, it becomes everyone’s strategy not just that of a select few privileged people at the top.
We underestimate the power of Emotions
A leader of a multi billion $ business recently said to me, “You know Jakob, we often underestimate the emotional attachment people have to the way things are done today”.
It struck a chord.
We don’t like change because there’s comfort in how we do things today. Change doesn’t just affect what we do, but also our working relationships with others which can have a profound impact on every individual.
This will create natural resistance to change. People will feel some degree of “loss” when embarking on a new strategy – as strange as that may sound.
Ultimately success will depend on individuals having the opportunity to connect to the strategy and understand how they will contribute to it at their level & create success for the organisation.
We’re often assessing strategy adoption by looking in the rear-view mirror
Last but not least, lack of visibility on whether or not we are moving in the direction we want is often the achilles heel when it comes to going from strategy to execution to results.
If we focus on “lag metrics” (i.e. looking at what has already happened), we’re too late.
Clear real-time visibility of progress is critical to be able to course-correct and ensure execution happens to deliver the results we want. Unless we have a common system and methodology to do so, it’s very hard to accomplish.
Jakob
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