Why Execution Is Important For A Strategy To Be Successful?

Copyright ?2021 by Rohit Mittal | [email protected]

The creator of the document reserves all rights. Publication Date: October 2021. Rohit Mittal reserves the right to change the contents of this article and the features or scope at any time. He does not have any obligation to notify anyone of such changes. The content has been adapted using secondary research from various data points via “Google Search”. Infographics and Images used in the document are the property of the respective owners and have been used for indicative purposes only. The author reserves the right for authorization and usage of the Intellectual Property contained in the document.

Executive Summary: -

I wrote this article twelve years back. I have always been a strong proponent of the art of execution and have repeatedly emphasized the pertinence of “Effective Execution”. I have been contemplating refurbishing this content piece for quite some time now. Here it is for those who understand and practice the often misunderstood and practised the art of execution.

The prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers going to school – a prize for the best costumes, grades in school, gold stars – and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams and divisions are ranked, the reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by objectives, Quotas, incentives pay, business plans put together separately, division by division cause further loss unknown and unknowable. Late Dr W. Edwards. Deming – TQM Guru.

What is the importance of execution: -

During one of my reading regimes, I read an interesting observation by an author that strategy is a commodity, whereas execution is an art. And I completely comply with the fact that today time has come for the organizations to focus less on intellectuality, analysis and strategy and more on implementing and making it work.

Execution is critical to success. Execution represents a disciplined process or a logical set of related activities that enable an organization to take a strategy and make it work. Without a careful, planned approach to execution, strategic goals cannot be attained. Developing such a logical approach, however, represents a formidable management challenge. Even with careful development of an execution plan at the business level, execution success is not guaranteed.

Although execution is critical to strategic success making, strategy work presents a formidable challenge. A host of factors like organizational politics, bureaucracy, inertia and resistance to change get in the way of execution success.

Management literature has focused primarily on parading new planning and strategy formulation ideas in front of eager readers, but it has sorely neglected execution.

Despite its importance, execution is often handled poorly by many organizations. There still are countless cases of good plans going awry because of substandard execution efforts. This raises some critical questions.

If execution is central to success, why don’t more organizations develop a disciplined approach to it? Why don’t companies spend time developing and perfecting processes that help them achieve critical strategic outcomes? Why can’t more companies execute or implement strategies well and reap the benefits of those efforts?

The simple answer, again, is that execution is complicated. Some formidable roadblocks or hurdles get in the way of the execution process and seriously injure the implementation of the strategy. The road to successful execution is full of potholes that must be negotiated for execution success.

Problems Impacting Successful Execution: -

Managers are trained to plan and not execute - One fundamental problem is that managers know more about strategy formulation than implementation. They are trained to plan, not to execute plans.

Let the “Grunts” handle Execution - Another problem is that some C-level and other top-level managers believe that strategy execution or implementation is “below them”, something best left to lower-level employees.

Planning and Execution are Interdependent - Even though there may be a separation of planning and execution tasks, the two are highly interdependent. Planning affects execution. The execution of strategy, in turn, affects changes to strategy and planning over time. Successful strategic outcomes are best achieved when those responsible for implementation are also part of the formulating process. The greater the interaction between the “doers” and “planners”, the higher the probability of execution success.

Execution Takes Longer Than Formulation - The execution of strategies usually takes longer than the formulation of strategy. Whereas planning may take weeks or months, strategy implementation is generally played over a more extended period. The longer time frame can make it harder for managers to focus on and control the execution process as many unforeseen things can materialize and challenge their attention.

Execution Involves More People Than Strategy Formulation - Besides being played out over extended periods, strategy implementation always involves more people than formulation. This presents additional problems. Communication down the organization or across different functions becomes a challenge.

Linking strategic objectives with personnel’s daily goals and concerns at different organizational levels and locations becomes a legitimate but challenging task. The larger the number of people involved, the greater the challenge of effective strategy execution.

Having Guidelines For Execution - Managers need a logical model to guide execution actions. Without guidelines, execution becomes a hunky-dory situation. Without guidance, individuals do the things they think are important, often resulting in uncoordinated, divergent, even conflicting decisions and actions. Having a model or roadmap positively affects execution success.

Managing Change - Execution of strategy often involves change. Not handling change well will spell disaster for execution efforts. Managing change means much more than keeping people happy and reducing resistance to new ideas and methods.

Many changes are usually required when developing a strategy. The ability to effectively manage change is therefore critical to the successful implementation of any process. Resistance, a lack of commitment, a lack of buy-in, and the need to maintain appearances all arise in this area. These are primarily emotional and mindset issues that have arisen due to not involving and engaging people from across the organization sufficiently during strategy development and execution.

Coordination and Information Sharing - These are vital to effective execution. Knowing how to achieve coordination and information sharing in complex geographically dispersed organizations is essential to execution success. Yet managers are often motivated not to share the information or work with colleagues to coordinate activities and achieve strategic and short-term goals. Why? The answer to this question is vital to the successful execution of strategy.

Inadequate Communication - The most frequently mentioned issue in the execution of strategy is poor communication. Communication that is vague, late, early, too much, and too little to the wrong people, or otherwise ineffective is referred to as ineffective communication. Many experts?claim that effective strategy is entirely dependent on effective communication. Even though this is a gross exaggeration, inadequate communication is a significant deterrent to success.

Inappropriate Alignment - Misalignment is frequently referred to as a result of poor strategy execution. Alignment refers to the process of achieving coherence and consistency between different levels of strategy, such as corporate strategy, business strategy, functional strategy, and operational strategy. The overarching corporate strategy becomes diluted at lower levels, leading to silo behaviour and a lack of consensus among all stakeholders.

Poor Performance Management - As the adage goes, what is measured becomes manageable, and what is manageable becomes accomplished. As a result, effective performance management is a critical component of successful strategy execution. If not executed correctly, this results in unclear or missing objectives and targets, incorrect use of measures and key performance indicators (KPIs), inadequate resource allocation, or counterproductive incentives if done ineffectively.

Project Management Done Inefficiently - Systematic follow-up and project management are required for successful strategy execution. The absence of such is the fifth critical problem in the execution of strategy. Executive dysfunction symptoms include lack of or conflicting priorities, unclear responsibilities, exceeded budgets, poor time management, delays, and inadequate or absent leadership at various organizational levels.

Non-Impactful Strategy - If the strategy is inappropriate or has an unclear, unfitting, unconvincing, uninspiring, non-actionable, or otherwise, an ineffective approach is frequently a bottleneck to effective strategy execution. Effective strategy execution must begin with a process that is executable in the first place; otherwise, failure is built-in before the strategy execution even begins to be carried out.

Concluding Remarks: -

Strategy and execution are difficult to master, and resolving the issues mentioned above can be highly time-consuming and challenging. But, it is not the case that there are no solutions available. But they should be deployed systematically in the future. If it were such a cakewalk, this article would come to a close right here. However, it appears that this is not sufficient, as the war between the proponents of Strategy and Execution will continue.