The Strategy-Execution Gap

CEOs and CIOs need to bridge the gap between strategy and execution to dramatically improve financial outcomes.

What is the Strategy-Execution Gap?

Harvard Business Review reported that companies on average deliver only 63% of the financial performance their strategies promise.

With the possible exception of politics, can you think of any other environment in which people can keep their jobs when they deliver less than two thirds of what they promise?

Simply put, while many companies have effective strategic planning, few consistently deliver the desired results. That huge chasm is referred to as the Strategy-Execution Gap.

How big a problem is this?

It’s big! Fortune 1000 companies generated a combined $15.9 trillion in revenues and $1.34 trillion in profits in 2020.

Read the statistics that follow and see if you agree that we may be leaving money on the table to the tune of several trillion dollars a year.

According to a McKinsey survey, an overwhelming 74 percent of executives don't have faith that their company's transformative strategies will succeed.

A Bridges Business Consultancy survey revealed only 10% of organizations achieve at least two-thirds of their strategic objectives and only 2% of leaders are confident that they’ll achieve 80-100% of their strategic objectives.

The Economist Intelligence Unit found 61% of respondents acknowledge that their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation.

Bain & Company studied large companies and reported 95% of employees do not understand their organization's strategy.

Is your company leaving millions, or billions, of dollars behind because of poor execution of its strategy? If you’re the CIO, how much more value could IT create if they were better at executing your strategy?

How to Bridge the Gap

Wolff Strategy Partners uses an eight-step process to ensure effective strategic planning and execution. This process has been applied to large and mid-sized companies, IT organizations, and other divisions and departments within companies.

Our methodology is based on the Balanced Scorecard? and then extends it. We prepare the strategy in a way that is ready for execution. That enables our clients to align their entire organization, provide specific performance objectives to all employees, and transparently track progress.

You can learn more about each step in previous articles organized on our blog. Here, I’ll just summarize, and I encourage you to email us and set up a call to learn more.

1. Five Filters – Mission, Vision, Values, Ideal Client, and Differentiators frame the strategy
2. Strategic Objectives – We define our aspirations within the boundaries of the Five Filters
3. Measurable Goals – Translate the Objectives into measurable goals
4. Action Plans – Work with employees at all levels to define how to achieve the Goals
5. Resourcing Plan – Assign people to Action Plans to ensure we have enough resources to successfully execute
6. Performance Plans – Assign performance objectives, linked to the strategy and action plans, to all employees
7. Program Management – Rigorously, and transparently, manage a comprehensive program of related Action Plans
8. Communication – Keep people informed at all levels from staff to the C-Suite to the Board

Conclusion

We bridge the Strategy-Execution Gap by aligning all employees around a measurable strategy that’s bounded by the Five Filters and translated into measurable goals and action plans. Those action plans are properly resourced and personal performance objectives are linked. Finally, we apply transparent oversight, and we communicate frequently throughout the eight-step process.

Most organizations see a measurable financial benefit the first year they apply this process. I ran IT and corporate strategic planning for a mid-sized, public company and we saw 23% growth in our customer base the first year we implemented this process. In another, Global 500 company, this methodology enabled us to transform IT into a strategic asset that put tens of millions of dollars on the bottom line. This stuff works!

Whether you’re a CIO applying this to IT or a CEO or COO improving your company’s performance, this methodology scales to organizations of all sizes and spans industries.

Try it. You will see benefits as you bridge the Strategy-Execution Gap. Let your competitors deliver less than two-thirds of promised results while you consistently execute your strategy.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with many of our readers and encourage you to continue reaching out to learn more. The best way to reach us is by email to [email protected] and she’ll be happy to schedule a call with me.

Larry Wolff is the founder & CEO of Wolff Strategy Partners, a boutique consulting firm specializing in Enterprise Strategy Management and Digital Transformation. Larry has served as CEO, COO, CIO, CTO, chief digital officer, and management consultant for public, private, international, and emerging growth companies. His specialties include corporate and IT strategic planning, technology led business transformation, business and IT turnarounds, merger integration and large-scale project rescues. His methodologies span industries and scale to companies of all sizes.

[email protected]            https://WolffStrategy.com