Why We Need a Strategy for Success

Research from Harvard Business Review suggests that 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, with 50% spending no time at all. And although we know how critical communication is when it comes to executing on our plans, perhaps even worse is their findings that on average, 95% of a company’s employees are unaware of, or do not understand the plan. That means more than 9/10 employees are bouncing around recklessly from task to task with no guiding direction! Hopefully these numbers don’t apply to your organization … But for the overwhelming majority that fit these statistics, imagine how much time and energy is being wasted. Not to mention the amount of money and opportunity that’s being left on the table!

Many visionaries rebel at the concept of excessive planning. Not only is planning and organization itself well outside of the typical visionary's "sweet spot," where they would like to be spending their time, but even the implications of planning are anathema them; they dislike the excessive structure and rigidity of a plan, especially a plan that involves following a daily schedule for all the business's tasks. The key with planning is to remember that even though it may give you more work to do at first, once every part of the plan is in place, leaders and teams will actually have less work later on...and the work will flow much more easily!

Going back to the numbers above, let's say that a business is one of the many that spend effectively 0 hours discussing strategy among leadership or among the team. Consider how difficult it would be for a team like that to work cohesively...even if they follow the instructions of the one leader that already knows the plan, everyone else will essentially be working blind, unsure of how what they're doing fits into the grand scheme of things. They will have nothing to go on to evaluate ther own work except for the approval or disapproval of whoever is reviewing it...and with no knowledge of a plan, those approvals may even seem totally arbitrary!

While creating a strategy and laying it out for your team may take some work, the amount of time, energy, and frustration that it will avoid is well worth it! Just like how all the crew on a ship need to work together to successfully set sail, your business team needs a clear vision in order to work as a single, productive unit.