The Snack BOxD September Digest - When the Rubber Hits the Road: How Even the Best Strategies Fall Apart

This is Snack BOxD, a highly digestible digest from me, Nenuca Syquia, CEO at Better Organizations by Design (BOxD). Every month I send a round-up of ideas and insights on how to create healthy, high-performing organizations. If you like this kind of thing or found me by accident, get your snack on and subscribe here.

On the menu this month… When the Rubber Hits the Road: How Even the Best Strategies Fall Apart. ?

Companies spend billions every year on crafting strategy, yet only one of every five will succeed. This month’s Snack BOxD digest has been guest written by my colleague and friend, Sheri Lyons (VP, Strategy and Innovation at BOxD).?

For over 30 years, Sheri has helped businesses across industries scale and transform. As a ‘swiss army knife’ executive, she has led teams across strategy, operations, HR, consulting, and sales, always hyper focused on the successful execution of strategy.? When I first met Sheri, I was struck by her ability to find failure points and her systematic approach to solving them. We also share a strong conviction that businesses can be drivers of good.

In this edition, Sheri poses thoughtful questions that you can use to assess your strategy? execution readiness. Pull out your pen and a pad, and scroll down.

I love this time of year!? It’s back to school and back to strategy season! That exciting and somewhat overwhelming? time of the year when we prepare our teams (and families) to? begin again!? ? The warm breezes of summer transition to the invigorating chill of fall, our cue to sharpen our pencils and sharpen our strategies.??

As we look back on 2024, some of us are scratching our heads, wondering what to do differently for a better outcome.? Some of us are experiencing exciting growth, but questioning our ability to sustain it.? For some of us, the result has been status quo - growth at the rate of the market.? The business continues to operate well, but it’s not moving forward in key differentiable areas.??

The environment remains dynamic and uncertain.? We’re welcoming new key leaders and saying goodbye to others as we pivot and position to change the trajectory of our organizations.? Putting a stake in the sand and declaring our strategy to our stakeholders is a defining moment and an exquisite opportunity to unify and energize the team.

Your strategy is, in the simplest terms, a series of choices… choices that decide how you bring your mission to life and how you will achieve your vision.? It’s how you create value and how you compete.

Companies spend $32B a year creating strategy, yet only 20% of them make it across the finish line!?

Isn’t that outrageous?? There’s no shortage of great ideas - it’s the ability to execute on them that eludes even the best organizations.??

Why do 80% of strategies fail?? Hint:? The answer lies in your system.

Let’s look closer at a few of the key reasons:

1. Lack of Alignment

Strategic initiatives often fail because they are not aligned with the organization’s culture, capabilities, or day-to-day operations. Without proper alignment, employees may struggle to understand or execute the strategy effectively.

2. Poor Communication?

Many organizations fail to clearly communicate the vision and goals of a strategic initiative. This can lead to confusion, lack of buy-in, and misalignment at different levels of the organization.? Communication breaks most often at the middle leadership level - those who lead the teams.? This is problematic because teams are THE unit where work happens.? They’re also the ones who have the most direct interactions with our clients.??

3. Inadequate Resources??

Strategic initiatives often suffer from insufficient resources—whether financial, human, or technological. A lack of tools, enablers and investment in key areas can hinder progress and cause initiatives to stall.

4. Resistance to Change??

Organizational inertia or resistance to change from employees or leadership can derail even the most well-conceived initiatives. Without proper change management, it is difficult to implement new strategies effectively.? Change management principles must be woven into the plan - not parallel to the plan.??

5. Lack of Clear Metrics and Accountability

Many organizations don’t set clear success metrics or hold leaders accountable for results. This can make it hard to assess progress, identify issues early, and ensure the initiative is on track.

6. Poor Leadership or Governance

Ineffective leadership or lack of strong governance structures can result in mismanagement or a failure to course-correct when challenges arise.? Leaders are the crux of change and they need to be equipped to be powerful models and change agents.? Leadership development that is not tethered to your strategic initiatives falls short of enabling strategy.??

7. Failure to Adapt

External factors such as market shifts, competition, or changes in customer preferences may require initiatives to pivot. Failing to adapt to these external pressures can result in failure.? The ability to move the entire system on a dime is key.? This is impossible if it is not aligned.

8. Overly Complex or Unfocused Initiatives

Complexity doesn’t execute.? Simplicity does.? Strategic initiatives that try to achieve too many objectives at once or are overly complex tend to lose focus. This can lead to confusion and a lack of execution at the operational level.??

A leader has two jobs to do:? produce results and develop the people and organization to deliver the outcomes.? Sounds easy, does hard!??

The most common responses to underwhelming results are:

• Toss out the strategy and start over!? (maybe that’s why we spend $32B year after year)?
• Blame the people - change the leaders (it’s not the people, it's the system!)
• Reorganize the company - (yikes!? Not again!? That may not be necessary if you’re aligned.)

And so the cycle goes.? The seasons change and as the colors fade, so too does our commitment.??

As the leaves fall, so too does engagement.? It’s no fun to win only 20% of the time.

It doesn’t have to be that way.? You will only get different results if you do things differently!

Better execution, better results, better culture…. It all happens by design, and from the inside out.??

In our experience, harnessing the power of alignment to make organizations “execution ready” prepares leaders and teams to be their competitive best.??

The goal is dynamic alignment up, down and across your system.? The outcome is an organization aligned to deliver on the results you desire.??

Steps you can take NOW to assess your organization’s execution readiness:

Step 1:? Get really clear on the what and why.??

Senior Leadership Team aligns on strategic focus and provides organizational clarity by translating complex strategy into focused action from the top of the house to the front lines.?

Step 2:? Assess current state of alignment.?

There are key organizational components that must be aligned to support focus and execution.? Leadership teams who are courageous and ask themselves these hard questions in advance have the ability to take evidence-based actions to set their teams up for greater success:

Optimized Structures

• How is work organized?
• What roles are in place and do they support strategy?
• How are decisions made??

Metrics & Rewards

• Does what you measure at the organization, leader and role level drive the business outcomes you've laid out?
• Have you pressure tested with eyes for unintended consequences?

Processes

• How are you doing the work?
• What process flows will allow the company to operate efficiently and create value???
• What microprocesses are needed underneath?

Enablers

• What tools or ways of working best support your desired outcomes?

People

• Do all of your talent practices along the employee lifecycle produce intended results?
• Does your workforce represent the skills and perspectives your strategy requires?
• Are leaders equipped to role model and drive the change needed to execute on strategy?
• Have you translated strategy into specific actions so that teams are empowered???
• Do teams hold each other accountable?

Culture

• Does your culture help, hurt or do nothing to further your strategy and vision?
• Have you engaged in deep organizational listening and artifact review to gather evidence and validate the lived organizational experience?
• Do you have a gap to close between your articulated culture and your true culture?
• Have you operationalized the shared mindsets, values and behaviors as strategic differentiators?

?Step 3:? Design and build the capabilities and capacity to execute.

Be mindful that your goals represent a gap between where you are today and where you want to be.? Closing the gap requires people to change.? The most impactful organizational alignment initiatives weave in change management principles from the start.

Although you know your organization best, engaging a Trusted Advisor to facilitate a collaborative organizational design experience is the most efficient and effective way forward. A? partner with an enablement approach will build organizational capacity and capability, increasing your organization’s value as you learn and grow together in the flow of this most important work.??

Your strategic plan is just the beginning - the real work hasn’t even started yet. The plan comes to life in your system and is only brought to life with and through people. ??Is your organization designed to deliver the outcomes you desire?? Let us know what you discover!? We’re here to help.

More Resources

• Meet with Sheri Lyons for real-time advice for your business
• Clearing the Fog:? TranslateBio's Journey into Sanofi - Join us on October 14th at 2pm ET for an enlightening webinar to hear how BOxD partnered with the Sanofi leadership team to create a successful transition, avoiding the pitfalls that lead to 70% of M&A failures.
• 10 Common Org Design Mistakes, And What To Do Instead - Spoiler: The top one is not having a clear strategy to anchor any organization design. Read on for the 9 others.?
• Ain’t No Mountain High Enough: Leadership and Meaningful Celebration - As you nail your business strategy, celebrations aren't likely the first thing to come to mind. But they do matter and can help drive performance against strategy. Read on for a framework on when and how to celebrate appropriately.
• Reimagine Strategic Planning - Check out our BOxD collaborative, structured process that brings your leadership and stakeholders together to build a shared vision for the future, including the strategies, goals, objectives and activities that will bring that vision to life.
• Gift BOxD Webinar Series - Watch our on-demand webinars to unwrap solutions to your organizational, leadership, and team challenges.? You don’t want to miss “The Top 5 Mistakes Leaders Make When Driving Change and What To Do Instead”!