Why are we still struggling to close the strategy-execution gap?
- Ben Wann
- Apr 5, 2022
- 4 min read
The real answer is that closing the strategy-execution gap is hard; really, really hard. Building a great organization, attracting and retaining the right people, and building and maintaining excellence throughout an organization are challenges that can't be solved quickly.
There is no simple color-by-numbers solution to fill in structural gaps for a prize so large in our organizations' health, profitability, and economies.
It isn’t one thing or three things that we must get right once. Strategy-Execution is about getting the critical elements right all the time.
What I've discovered in the process of writing this book is that strategy-execution isn't an objective; it's a discipline. Like any discipline, strategy-execution depends on an earnest and wholehearted adoption, not choosing sections a la carte that fits best into your worldview. Each block builds upon the others to create a lasting structure.
Once the right strategy is in place, the focus shifts fully to execution. More than mere tactics, execution is the fundamental bridge between strategy and performance. It must be approached as a systematic process for rigorously reviewing and challenging strategic imperatives, operational directives, underlying capabilities, accountabilities, and performance outcomes.
When managed as a disciplined process, strategy-execution is an iterative, adaptive, and robust method for running a business. Without this discipline — this systematic process — the strategy-execution lessons might remain only good ideas left sitting on a bookshelf.
While many managers and professionals may think of improving strategy-execution as identifying and removing the few, big, identifiable roadblocks like filling in a pothole in the middle of a highway, there is way more to it. Working towards strategy-execution is a multi-faceted process.
Because progress has been slowed by years of compounded neglect and unintentionality in an organization, obvious quick fixes are not the remedy- we must look deeper. Imagine sand caught in many gears at the same time that eventually causes a machine to sputter out of control. Unless you specifically look for the damage, the destruction can almost be unseen until it is too late. Likewise, by the time organizations acknowledge a strategy-execution issue, the cost of repairs is unmanageable. According to the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, senior executives wholeheartedly agree that an organization's architecture — which includes the very structures, processes, and systems supposed to enable work — is their most significant obstacle to strategic execution.
Poor architecture, leadership, and command structures slow down decision-making in a morass of reporting relationships, regulations, approvals, and other bureaucratic tendrils. They confuse and impede progress through inefficient resource flows, process inefficiencies, conflicting priorities, and finger-pointing. And they muddy rather than elucidate decision-making with incomplete or distorted information. To close the strategy-execution gap, we now understand that goals are only met by embracing an intentional and systematic strategy-execution framework, not a patchwork of tools and policies.
We also must champion the fact that people hold the knowledge and the answers, whether they know it now or not. Each person in your organization needs to be empowered to grow and share their skills and knowledge with others, especially those who make decisions.
On the human resource side, strategy-execution isn't just about focusing on productivity but also attracting, developing, deploying the best human capital, raising skill levels, and ensuring that the organization possesses the knowledge, skills, skills, and abilities appropriate for the task.
Rather than command-and-control, we need flexible structures and sophisticated information systems to support work processes that fit the tasks and strategy. More agile, cross-functional structures accompanied by easy access to the right information at the right moment create the capacity to meet shifting demands quickly.
After nearly a year of thinking, reading, and writing accompanied by nearly a decade of hands-on experience, the path to closing the strategy-execution gap has flushed itself out in the steps below. If you and your organization want to Get Shit Done, you must be able and willing to check off and "own" each item.
1. Build and maintain high employee engagement levels demonstrated around ownership of Who, What, and When. Explain the Why.
2. Establish ownership in the organization. Hire the right people, trust them, and compensate them for aligning them with the organization's goals.
3. Demand high levels of professionalism by encouraging a disciplined structure of personal development, growth, and learning. Through deliberate practice, encourage others to develop grit and tenacity to persevere against challenging goals. Continuous learning is a must.
4. Set Expectations of Excellence to create and maintain an environment where full accountability and excellence are the norms. A highly skilled workforce with a focus on a continuous improvement mindset will beat a centralized command-and-control policy. Build Accountability Chains to increase accountability—reward excellence.
5. Ingrain a Sense of Urgency. Define what the real priorities are and get people are resources pointed in the right direction.
6. Acknowledge tradeoffs are required between resources. An organization must be deliberate in choosing what to do and not do. Avoid unrealistic expectations.
7. Separate strategy-execution into two categories; the Big What and Little Whats. To prepare for achieving large and complex goals, individuals and teams obtain experience leading projects and improving work in their teams, departments, and functions.
8. Avoid static planning methodologies and embrace decentralization to allow those closest to the work to build the best solutions.
9. Set clear expectations and avoid assumptions.
10. Track and measure progress against realistic goals that have clear owners.
11. Incorporate design thinking into the Who, What, and When. Systemize and automate where possible to free time for value-added work. Remove friction wherever possible.
12. Foster excellent communication demonstrated by candor, feedback, alignment, and frequent check-ins. Be mindful in determining how we communicate to increase speed, increase accountability, and avoid confusion.
13. Build a unique and robust culture manifested through Ways of Working.
14. Minimize distractions and embrace simplicity. Focus on what matters and minimize what doesn't with the Pareto Principle.
15. Encourage individuals to learn and think like leaders and to act accordingly. Encourage creativity and innovation to build systems and processes that e. Being forward-looking, prepared, and proactive are valuable characteristics. Build leadership at all levels.
16. Execute, assess, iterate. Repeat.
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