CEOs know the execution problem – they told me so….

When I spend time with CEOs conducting strategy assessments, there are several common challenges connecting CEOs, regardless of industry, and the same issues connect CEOs of multi-billion-dollar enterprises to relatively new scale-up startups of a hundred people. These challenges and issues are highlighted below with results from Howwe Technologie’s independent Strategy Assessment tool and are discussed below.

Too many goals clutter the organisation: Everything is important. This feeds into a sense that the CEO and Management Team are constantly stressed and 'really busy', almost too busy to function correctly or to take on new tasks. Has the CEO and Management Team got a clear sense of priorities and is everyone aligned behind these Most Important Goals? It is vital that these goals are broken down to every function, department, and team – ensuring organisational-wide alignment and creating an understanding of what to focus on, for all. It’s vital that this is a genuine commitment too, not just at the planning session, but also once everyone goes back to their jobs. And, when important things change in the field, does everyone communicate back up the chain of command; does the company have a frictionless process for this to happen quickly? Solution: have fewer strategic goals than too many, spend the time to ensure goals are broken down to every function, department and team, to ensure alignment.

Communication takes too long: There is a frustration that the ’analogue’ method of communication takes a long time. Face to face meetings are important, for many CEOs this is what they are good at – to inspire people, and to ensure they get feedback from the front line. However should this way of working be the exception or the norm? Solution: investigate a digital planning methodology to ensure ease of communication up, down and across the organisation.

Inconsistency of planning: Steering a company requires consistency. Collating information from different systems takes time, and often there is 'too much data'; coupled with the challenges of 'everything is important' and a lack of rigorous prioritisation, often means going into meetings unprepared. Teams go into meetings without a clear idea of what they should be working on, and leave with even more ’to do’. Resulting in items never being done. Solution: Be ruthless on prioritisation, and a strict 'definition of done’, and build a commitment process and cadence that ensures your organisation knows what is expected of them when they attend weekly or monthly meetings. ??

Lack of alignment to core goals, often starts at the top:?80% of staff do not know what the company’s goals are. How can that be given CEOs, HR and management teams are doing the analogue bombardment of messages around company goals? As we covered above, there is often lack of genuine clarity on the company’s Most Important Goals, combine this with possible ambiguity from the listener’s side that they interpret what’s most important to them. This is where analogue methods of communication and execution really break down, as there is often too much data or messaging to control, with too much of?a gap between doing your planning sessions and seeing the actual results for intervention to happen. Without a faster feedback loop between strategy and execution, companies run the risk of not staying on plan. Add in the complexity of regional, geographic or cross-functional silos, and it is easy to see how quickly ’execution’ breaks down and companies cannot get back to plan. Solution: intervene early. It’s better to take early action when things look like they are off plan, than to wait for that to happen.

Cross-functional alignment can work better: To really accelerate performance, a CEO needs to ensure that their whole organisation is contributing to the goals. A common challenge when talking to CEOs of large enterprises in matrix organisations, where all senior leaders are reliant on cross-functional teams, the visualisation and reporting of progress just becomes another level harder. Frustration develops as priorities and progress become harder to control and visualise. Solution: Ensure cross-functional teams are reminded of where they contribute to business goals and are a regular part of the communication process and planning.

Lagging Activities not Leading: It’s a common analogy that we can’t drive a car forward looking in the rear-view mirror, but even today, based on my research with CEOs of large enterprises, many companies are not consistently using forward/ leading indicators across all levels of the company towards the progress of their goals. There are still many lagging indicators being used. Reviewing these at Quarterly Business Reviews or similar planning meetings, interventions can take place to course-correct the strategy; but wouldn’t it be fantastic if companies had leading indicators and intervention built into their DNA? Course correction becomes more natural for everyone in the company, and less dramatic, and we steer the car looking forward taking key measures into account in our day-to-day work, rather than scrambling for data post-fact. Solution: using leading indicators breeds more intelligence in the organisation and enables better, more informed conversations between teams.

Not enough speed & too much energy expended to stay on plan: If a Sales Director of a multi-billion dollar company could not view the progress of their sales pipeline ’at-a-glance’ in 2023, this would be highly unusual. However a common comment from CEOs is that visualising the progress of most important goals vs. plan at all levels in the company, takes significant energy on mundane tasks of gathering data from a PMO or similar function and then ’following up’ is a manual and tedious task in one-on-one meetings. Solution: CEOs need the ability to see progress to what’s most important in a single digital platform that can also be viewed by the whole enterprise and bring 'digital power' to their organisations.

In conclusion, companies using Strategic Execution platforms such as Howwe? generate a proven, measurable 30% acceleration of initiatives at all levels. This builds a sense of confidence, staff satisfaction and tremendous financial success, and importantly a heck of a lot less stress in getting there. #strategy #CEO #strategyexecution #intelligententerprise Howwe ANZ Pty Ltd Howwe Technologies