Modern Principles for Closing the Strategy Execution Gap

My?previous post?discussed why execution is hard and offered you a self-assessment to rate your organisation.??Next week we will provide a proven method for execution.??Any method, however, is only as effective as the principles that inform it.??There are numerous principles which were appropriate in the Industrial Age which must be replaced by modern principles better suited for today’s work and workplace.??Here are 5 (modern) principles to inform execution.

1. Unlock contribution.??Many organisations hold unexamined assumptions that limit employee contribution.??They still rely on the top down, command and control approaches that fuelled growth and profitability in the industrial era.??The basic tenants of this management style: ensuring control, eliminating variance, and rewarding conformance inhibit collaboration and organisational learning.??The result is organisations led by well-meaning managers who fail when they confront dynamic contexts.??The principle is to unlock contribution by soliciting input.??People commit to what they create.??We must seek contribution from the Extended Leadership Team (they translate strategy into action) and Front-Line Staff (whose close proximity to the customer provides critical insight).?
2. Fewer.??Bigger.??Better.??Many strategy roadmaps contain dozens of projects which impact the organisation concurrently.??The results in noise (“another project???Where does this one fit in?”) and organisational clutter.??This is often the result of lazy, disaggregated thinking or (more often) shows that the Executive Leadership Team failed to provide the necessary bundling and narrative to show how what look to be 5 separate initiatives are really one program.??If you’re currently trying to execute five, ten, or even twenty important goals, the truth is that your team can’t focus.??The Fewer, Bigger, Better principle improves execution.??Fewer?projects reduce the burden on cross-functional resources and provides these projects ‘wildly important’ status (more on that next week) which means more focus and resources.??Bigger?programs?have increased scope and size to meet targets and leverage scale.??Better?projects are differentiated, with strong value propositions and support that will drive sustainable?benefits.
3. Accelerate Agency.??Most leaders can differentiate between lag measures (revenue, market share, profit, etc.) and lead measures.??Lead measures are the measures of the most high-impact things your team must do to reach the goal.??In essence, the measure of the new behaviours that will drive success on the lag measures.??We must provide our teams with the ability to select the behaviours?within their control?that will influence these lead measures.??We all know how demoralising it is to be given a goal and not believe we can influence the outcome.???This is the principal of agency.??When we have a sense of agency, we have a feeling of control over actions and their consequence.??Hundreds of valid research studies show that agency is fundamental for goal achievement.
4. Keep Score.??People play differently when they’re keeping score. If you doubt this, watch any group of kids playing soccer and see how the game changes the minute scorekeeping begins.?

?The truth of the statement is more clearly revealed by a change in emphasis: people play differently when?they?are keeping score.??It’s not about you keeping score for them.??The principle of engagement is absolute.??The highest level of performance always comes from people who are emotionally engaged and the highest level of engagement comes from knowing the score – that is, if people know whether they’re winning or losing.??It’s that simple.

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results”?— Sir Winston Churchill

5. Learn as you go.??Execution as learning means operating in a way that allows organisations to learn as they go.??It means that work groups, departments, or entire companies can adjust, improvise, or innovate?while at the same time delivering products or services to customers.??It is a way of operating that is deliberately iterative, where action and reflection go hand-in-hand.?Execution as learning can best be understood in contrast to execution as efficiency, a classic industrial era management approach where leaders provide answers.??Execution as efficiency assumes that those at the top know more about how to get results than those who do the work at the front lines of production or customer service.??Those at the top, along with the smart, technical people they employ, invest considerable effort into figuring out and installing optimal work processes.??This investment makes process change unattractive (and rare), because everyone knows that implementing change is a huge undertaking.??Feedback is usually a one-way street: bosses tell subordinates whether or not they did what they were supposed to do, and subordinates are not expected to offer solutions or judgements.??Execution as efficiency tends to use fear as a tool to keep people in line.??This is effective when tasks require little judgement or ingenuity, when they are done by independent individuals, and when quality can easily be observed.??This is rarely the case today.??The learn as you go principle?enables employees to absorb, and sometimes, create, new knowledge while executing their work.