Strategy, Execution, and Limits

The Covid-19 crises have surely taught one thing; traditional resilience planning is not enough to survive during a pandemic. The coronavirus has badly affected the business and investor community across the globe. In these critical times of uncertainty, today's businesses must know the difference between strategy and execution, the potential limitation of the strategy, and the importance of improving their response during uncertain times.

I'm always fascinated about the Execution and Strategy and proud of my majors in strategic Project Management from IISc 15 years ago. It helped me in executing many projects in systematic manner. Key take way, not one execution style works for all. It's always a game and how we executes, matters to win. The game itself went through lot of changes. Traditional ways no longer works. Some of my experiences and thoughts here on (Strategy and Execution) and (Strategy Vs Execution)

Strategy is not used to determine what to think about the future; rather, it helps decide how to think about the same.

Strategy & Execution are DIFFERENT

It's always a Commentator Vs Cricketer funda. One talks and plans on the mic and it never reaches the players in a practical manner.

The businesses having leaders who overlook the difference between the two were most affected. Recognising the difference between strategy and execution has a major and positive effect on a business’s performance.

Strategy design is based on detailing positions on strategic factors. These are the decision parameters used by key stakeholders. This is the criteria that customers use in deciding what to purchase from a business, employees in deciding to work for a company, and vendors in deciding to serve to a business. Strategy design is based on the position that, for example, a SaaS based products considers customers’ factors such as Customer Need, Cost factors, Market Viability and Competition. The strategy design should be made on the organisation level since every business is faced with its competitors in the marketplace. They compete, business against business.

Point of Failures

Failure to Note Difference Between Strategy Design & Execution

One of the key reasons behind strategy design failure is that executive teams don’t demonstrate organisation-wide thinking from the beginning. They just rush to strategy execution. 

While planning the next strategy retreat, business leaders must recognise that the essential difference between strategy design and execution lies in the level of analysis. While most leaders might be unaware of it, it is one of the most significant and valuable concepts in social science. Strategy design works at the organisation level while the execution at the individual level; both have a huge difference in terms of requirements and criteria.

Unclear values & priorities

Often, the underlying issue is the process through which strategy was developed — or the lack of data points to build such strategies and completely depending on assumptions and gut feels. Depending completely on predictive tools and reports that have limited scope and no human factors.

Poor leadership styles

When it is about individual leadership, ineffective leadership styles include:

• a top-down approach, defining the strategy based on top view rather considering the bottom layers
• laissez-faire, non-confrontational style rather a lazy leadership
• Greedy leadership. Focus is always on the short term goals

These styles are related to a leader's aversion to conflict or the lack of a clearly defined paths for having a constructive debate to carry it through to a decision.

The Future Actions

The leaders need to be pro-active, focusing not only on the short-term survival strategy but also on the long-term consequences and predictions considering the realities on the ground. They can start with an assessment of the current strategy, the future goals, the leadership style, strengths of the teams and the hidden barriers in the way of execution of the strategy design. Above all, a strong leadership having a wise foresight is essential to direct the agility and effectiveness of the business.