Strategy execution happens in small chunks. Plan your day to hedge against procrastination. Plan your week to you carve out a space of calm in the urgent-important. Plan your month to focus on strategic goals.
Do you look like the guys in the photo as you execute strategy?
You have returned from your off-site. You have a tight strategy and a plan. Your team is enthused and ready plunge into the work. Everyone is amped for strategy execution.
Now what?
Well for many teams, nothing happens. And, as the Goons used to say ‘it happens fast’. The flood of everyday operating and frenetic busyness, irresistibly sucks teams back into what they were doing before they left to talk strategy and plan. ‘Tomorrow’, there is always tomorrow! Or next week! Things will be much better next week. “And you see, this is such a busy time. Next month we will have time”.
Days become weeks become months. The strategy and the plan are all but forgotten. The months click past. Before you know it you are racking your brains in small groups again, stretching your creativity to try to recall what you all did in the previous year to contribute to delivering the strategy. You have failed to execute your strategy. Again!
Defining strategy may be challenging. Aligning your team around the strategy is not easy. Planning takes time and discipline. But executing strategy is much, much more difficult. Getting your team to work towards the change defined in your strategy takes hard work. Almost all organisations today are swamped by a flood of urgent and important daily tasks that each person knows they have to complete just to keep the business running.
Make time to execute strategy
Some debt counsellors advise clients to find one more income source, however small. In the same way you will need to make time. Find a slice of time each week to lift your eyes from the urgent tasks in your day to work on your strategy.
Pick your tasks with care
To execute strategy we are told to set a goal, do the work and achieve the goal.
This is incorrect.
For strategy execution you need to set strategic goals and execute these goals in the midst of a flood of daily operational urgencies.
Taking time out to work on deliverables that are not urgent, no matter how important they are, takes discipline. It’s hard. But there is a way. Here is how it works:
Your Strategic Objectives provide a frame for your strategy:
Your Lag Measures provide the picture of what you want to achieve:
Your Lead Measures provide the system through which you can achieve your lag measures:
Your scorecard, (ever notice how intense a casual game of ping-pong becomes when you start to keep score). Your scorecard allows you to track your progress:
All of this is great.
But.
Left like this it will all stand there looking great. You need an engine. And herein lies the secret to executing strategy:
The engine consists of the weekly commitments you make to each other about what you are going to deliver in the next week to execute strategy. Again you may be forgiven for posing the weekly question “what is the most important thing I can do next week?” This is too broad. It lacks the laser-like focus required to make a difference as you execute strategy.
To successfully execute strategy – ask this question:
“What is the one thing I can do in the coming week that will impact my lead measures?”
OK, one or two things!
And it is best to do this as a team. You look each other in the eye. You hear how the last week’s commitments were delivered and you hear and challenge each other’s commitments for the next week.
Now you may be thinking “OH no not ANOTHER <<your favourite expletive>> meeting. Unfortunately this is where teams flounder. For a team of eight to ten people, this meeting should not take longer than 10 minutes. But there are strict rules:
- Same time same place every week.
- Weekly deliverables are specific and measurable. No vague outcomes like “I will do my best to up my game.”
- Keep track of commitments and delivery. There are software tools for this. But filling out a word document or a flip chart each week is highly effective.
- No operational commitments. Save these for your day job.
- No excuses. NO excuses! You commit, you deliver. When disaster does strike you make a plan to catch up on previous commitments, even as you carry out the next.
- Show how the previous commitments moved the measures on your scoreboard.
- No explanations, no questions. This is not a normal conversation. This is a structured sharing of results and commitments. Execution meetings taking longer than 10 minutes are on the slippery slope to extinction. Points for discussion can be logged to be taken offline.
So there it is. The process to execute strategy.
Of course the engine to execute runs on fuel. For high energy fuel read “ A productive Day – in Four Acts”
