Now more than ever delivering transformative change is critical to the survival of an organization. In a post-pandemic world, global organizations will invest billions of dollars into changing their business models to support the ‘new ways of working’ and the so-called ‘new normal’. Executing on these transformation strategies will become the responsibility of Boards, CEO’s and their senior leaders but a strategy alone won’t help, engaging the entire organization to align to the strategic objectives and to understand the role each individual plays in making the journey will be the difference, for strategy without execution is a recipe for disaster. In fact the Project Management Institute reports that up to 11.4% of every dollar invested in projects is wasted.
The difference between wild success and a novel failure is the ability to execute against strategy. In many cases, even if the strategy is flawed, the organization that executes best wins. I’ve read this so many times that it’s almost become a cliché.
The mechanics of strategic execution is what I’m interested in. And it turns out it’s not that complicated. Ultimately it consists of three simple concepts.
- Alignment
This is where a solid strategy comes into play. If everyone is marching in different directions nothing gets accomplished. Set your goals and get everyone working towards them. - Transparency
People need to collaborate, stay informed and understand what others are working on. Without transparency, you get waste, lots of duplicate effort, and even more frustration. - Accountability
Everyone needs to know what’s expected of them. This means making sure they follow through on what they say, and they know how success will be measured.
Putting it to practice
Taking these three concepts and putting them into practice should be simple and straightforward. For successful execution, everyone has to participate and feel empowered.
- Define and communicate the goals & objectives. Make sure they are clearly communicated and that teams and individuals can expand on them and make them their own.
- Capture and track the metrics & KPIs. Once the goals have been identified, use metrics to track progress and set your targets to determine success.
- Coordinate and manage all the business activities. Marry the goals and metrics to the action plans necessary to realize success.
As a summary, remember: Goals – Metrics – Action Plans
We’ve put this to practice at Shibumi and have helped our customers to achieve some pretty incredible results, let us know if we can help you execute upon your strategy?