Implementing Your Strategy Like a Champ

In the various businesses I have launched, hitting our revenue targets meant we had the right strategy. Hitting our profit targets meant we were executing them.?

Revenue = Strategy and Profit = Implementation. In all businesses, successfully implementing the right strategies always means growth. With so much at stake, why is it that successfully implementing your strategy can be so difficult?

Here are a few things that have gotten in my way of implementing a good strategy over the years.

It's easy to confuse activity with making meaningful progress that advances projects and initiatives to completion. There are a couple of things here. We can get caught up worrying about every last detail and every last activity. We end up chasing the work and ticking things off our To-do list without stopping to ensure these activities get executed at the right time.

The other distraction is that we sometimes worry about being all things to everyone. We should concentrate on running for the right customers, not all customers. Remember the 80/20 rule and cater to your top 20% of customers.??

Strategic planning is not an annual activity; it must be dynamic and ready to respond to shifting realities within your marketplace.??

Planning and documentation are an important part of the process. Your time, attention, and commitment should be dedicated to adhering to a process or model. Overengineered workstreams distract from addressing the real issues in execution, and we can get bogged down in the details. There is nothing wrong with getting the least viable model out in the wild where it can get polished and fine-tuned. This helps you achieve results quicker than sitting around waiting for perfection.

Leaders get caught up in perfectionism

This is an extension of the point I just raised. Balancing the desired results with reality is the key. Making everything a priority slows execution, maximises rework, and causes a lack of focus on the high-level strategy. Perfectionism often leads to defensive debates on key elements of the strategy, unrealistic expectations, and failure fears by team members.

Too many priorities slow down execution

Too many priorities usually mean that nothing is a priority. You can end up inching dozens of projects and the overall strategy forward instead of advancing the most important by miles. Rank your preferences early, negotiate flexibility, delegate where possible, and eliminate distractions. Many times, we had so many high-priority projects on the go that none of them got completed on time.

Operational issues consume your time and effort

Refrain from allowing day-to-day operational problems to monopolise your attention and energy. Block out time daily to focus on your growth strategy, including acquiring resources, measuring progress, and providing feedback and mentoring to the team. Allow your customer-facing managers to do their jobs. A healthy habit for business leaders is to take a "Clarity Break". Head off for a day or two with no operational distractions where you can envision big-picture ideas.??

Time for a true confession – some of the best business ideas I had occurred early in the morning as I helped my daughter deliver newspapers on her paper route!

Trust your team (or get a new one!)

The essence of micromanagement is thinking you are the only person to manage a project. Most often, this attitude is a matter of you being unwilling to trust the implementation team fully or giving up the reward or recognition you expect to receive for successful strategic results.

If your group is mentally invested in the project and they have been given the resources and the trust to achieve the results, get out of the way and let them do their thing. Remember that there is more than one way to accomplish a goal and that your way is not the only way.

Some people will tell you that profitable growth is primarily a sales and marketing function. These are necessary, but they are not enough.?

Only through the successful implementation of the correct strategy can you achieve the sustainable growth we all are looking for.