Effective Strategy Execution: The Top 3 People Moves

Effective Strategy Execution Matters
A clear strategic direction without the effective strategy execution to make it happen is little more than a vision on paper.  Unimplemented strategies are worth very little.  You may have carefully plotted your path for success; but if you don’t follow through, anchor point-by-anchor point and step-by-step, you’ll never reach your goal.

Why Strategies Stall: The Strategy Execution Research
Leaders are frustrated.  They leave a strategy retreat energized and aligned and then their finely crafted strategic plan is not being implemented at the quality or speed that they expect.  That is not surprising.  The track record of strategy execution is not very good.

• IBM found that less than 10% of well formulated strategies are effectively executed.
• Research by Kaplan and Norton found that 85% of leaders spend less than one hour a month talking about strategy.
• A recent Harvard Business Review study revealed that, on average, 95% of a company’s employees are unaware of, or do not understand, its strategy.

Three Essentials of Effective Strategy Execution
Your strategies must go through your people to be successfully implemented.  To get your key stakeholders on board with your strategy and pointed in the same direction, you need them to be:

1. Fully Engaged Employees
   When you have built a healthy workplace culture where employees want to work rather than have to work, you have a high level of employee engagement; this promotes a high level of performance and, in turn, effective job execution.

   How do you attain this?

   By actively involving your employees in strategy all along the way — soliciting their input as you design the strategy and including them in the decision making so they have an important and meaningful role in contributing to the organization and a say in the future direction of the company.

   According to research by Bain, this simple, but powerful step, has twice the influence on successful strategy execution compared to any other executive team approach.

2. Totally Accountable Employees
   To motivate and retain key employees who are essential to your strategic growth plans, everyone from the C-suite to frontline employees must be held accountable to deliver on their behavioral and performance commitments.  Teams need to know that they will be held to a high standard and that they must do what they said they would do.

   Cultural accountability is the key to creating the high performance culture required for effective strategy execution.

3. Appropriately Recognized Employees
   To encourage the right behaviors that ensure effective strategy execution, employees need to be appreciated for the right behaviors and outcomes that move the strategy forward.  Employees who are not recognized for their good work are twice as likely to leave their jobs within a year.  Are you doing what it takes to appropriately recognize and reward the behaviors and outcomes that you seek?

The Bottom Line
Grand visions without effective strategy execution is just a plan without impact.  Make sure you build an organization where employees are engaged, accountable, and recognized enough to move your strategies forward.  Strategy execution trumps strategy design every time.

To learn more about effective strategy execution, download Do You Have the Right Culture to Drive Your Growth Strategy Forward?