“We’ve got our strategy.” Do you, really?

Strategy is execution

“We’ve got our strategy.”

Do you, really?

Let me guess. There’s a 40+ slides PowerPoint deck titled Strategy_final_final2.pptx somewhere on your company drive. It was last opened at the start of the previous quarter by... well, you.

Congrats!??????????????

You probably spent 50+ hours working on this “strategy” with the rest of the C-level executives. And because you practice "democratic leadership", you also invited Mark, the VP of Marketing, to join one of your sessions.?

But let’s be honest, Mark’s ideas were different than yours and… his invite for the next planning session got lost somewhere. And this strategy? It’s losing its audience faster than Netflix.

I had over 25 calls last week with small, medium and large organizations across the globe. They all have the same challenges.?

They are stuck in their planning mode and they fail to understand that...

Strategy is all about execution.?

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll dive a little deeper into “what the hell do you mean by that, Karim?”

Perfection is the loud and obnoxious death of your strategy

At its root, execution is daunting.?

Planning helps you feel safe. It keeps you in total control of what happens next. And you can spend months polishing the plan, making it perfect for that all-hands presentation in January.?

But strategy and perfection are the opposite.

Perfectionism is procrastination, fear, and failure. While strategy is action, alignment, and adapting.

Execution forces you to take actions that confront the future. You take on risk. It is unpredictable, and in many industries, unforgivable. For that reason, many companies keep planning until they feel capable of good execution. It’s paralysis by analysis. But all this waiting around can be a huge mistake.

A rapidly scaling startup can easily charge into the market and take everything while you fumble to plan.?

Ultimately, the failure of your efforts is not as bad as the failure to try at all.?

Strategy without execution is just a hypothesis

This is our mantra at Cascade.?

Not because it’s catchy, but because it shows exactly what’s wrong with 90% of strategies. They are being set up for failure from the first planning session in a closed boardroom.?

You should treat your strategy as a living thing. It is an ongoing, inclusive process with action plans on how each employee can contribute to the success of the overall vision. It has a built-in feedback loop and is action-biased. With a higher sense of ownership, team members understand their role and know exactly what they can do to support strategy execution.?

Better yet, they feel motivated to own strategy, align on execution, give feedback and adapt. It’s almost as if… they feel empowered to test the hypothesis and bring in results.?

The next time you’re gonna think about strategy, stop.

Forget about long planning sessions, PowerPoints, and complicated, perfected plans. Instead, talk with your team members, set up the hypothesis, and?

Execute.?