Your Strategy Needs An Execution Strategy

Strategies fail because say what we may otherwise,  in our minds we continue to believe the current stage is FUN - 'fine until now'. Therefore by logic, if it was fine until now, it should be good to continue the same for the future.

Success  belongs to those who can breakthrough the myth of 'FUN' and thence move ahead to actually fulfil their pre-determined strategies. This piece is written to influence you to move from FUN to FAME...fast enough in the journey of change.

When we look around and also within our own selves, we see a lot of frustration. The consequential prevalence of apathy, dejection, rejection, displacement , anger and rebellion generally in the environment is just but so natural. Speed a car unknowingly faster than the one next to you at the traffic signal and see the reaction to experience this.

Everybody in life is generally unhappy with the state they find themselves in. Multitudes of reasons. Everybody is seeking to reach a different state than the one they accidentally find themselves in...be it a student seeking a job, a professional with his flaggerating career or an unreasonable boss or a family man with his budgets and relationships at home. Any common man. You included. Me included too.

All of us also have full knowledge and the know how of what it takes and what needs to get done to reach that desired state. That is the good news. In the Google world of 'infonotics' , there is no penury of information and analytics on how to 'anything...'. So where is the problem ? Why the frustration ?

The bad news is that despite knowing how to reach our 'dream' states , we are not able to actually reach it. We even work on putting together a strategy to move from our current 'discovery state' to our desired 'dream state'. But we are not able to actually achieve it. This naturally culminates into expressed and unexpressed frustration prevailing all around , each waiting to explode at the slightest ignition or provocation !

This piece is therefore about getting correct  understanding of strategy and it's execution. Focus is on understanding :

- why our strategies actually fail and

- what we actually need to do to design a

'strategy to execute our strategy'.

There are Seven things we need to do to insulate Strategies from F-A-I-L-I-NG in its execution :

1. FUN...'fine until now'.

Whilst one feels the winds of change, mind plays dirty tricks. It ignores the real situation and tricks the person into believing -   fun . It tells the person, you have been 'fine until now' so these temporary changes can't drastically alter life and go wrong. Hide your head under the shadow and wait for the tornedo to pass. Things will be normal again and thence you resume where you paused. FUN is the of all change initiatives. It makes people avoid moving into immediate action when they see first rushes of change.

2.  Altering the Pattern permanently'

Future is another rhythm. Just holding back for a while will not help. Altering the pattern is absolutely necessary. Current pattern may be FUN .But you can't over extend it into a new situation. You now need to move to 'FAR' ...for Future is another rhythm! Changing pattern is tough. It does hold a future promise. In the long term sometime in the future, there may be pleasure as an outcome  of the change. But in the present, there will be pain. Pain with surety now for potential pleasure some time in the future. The dice is loaded in favour of betting for continued pleasure in the present. Thus immediate  avoidance of change is a natural reaction.

Another critical aspect of changing pattern is that it's alteration is permanent and has to become a part of the permanent rhythm of life.  It cannot be a temporary change. This explains why all our experiences with diets and exercising regimes succeed in the short run but fail in the long run. We can make short term changes effectively but sustaining change permanently is the challenge as it deals with permanent altering of comfortable patterns.

3.  'Invest in Metricising' efforts, smartly.

Smart encompasses both meanings...SMART...as we learnt it in goal setting parlance as also smart also indicating application of behavioural sciences principles effectively in motivating and managing change. Evolve easily winning metrics. Any big report to be written could actually be split into meaningful sub-parts each of which can be attacked bit-by-bit one day at a time, before its deadline to avoid last minute urgency to write it super. With smart metrics, this could easily be done.

4. 'Leadership Commitment'

Leadership commitment to execute the strategy should be unwavering. Research has indicated that 70% of times when strategy failed, it was due to the fact that leadership's own faith in the strategy it had developed wavered during some phase of its execution, particularly if it met early disappointments. Leadership commitment was the prime driver to success of a strategy particularly if it was new or radically different in the transformation journey. LEADERSHIP therefore has to fully be committed if it is serious about its success.

5. Influencing Change

Change can be bulldozed by power.  Sometimes it may need to be. However, that certainly impacts it's speed and acceptance. Use Influencing skills. Use your knowledge of psychology and your inter-personal skills to usher in the change. Use appreciative enquiry. That way resistance to change can be broken down through positivity and through synchronised harmony. However, sometimes this too may fail.

6. New world thru Altering of Demography

to support new Agenda...often times the change initiatives fail because the existing demography which has been soaked and absorbed in the prevailing culture, resists it. It is critical, particularly when large scale transformation is initiated to change the critical leadership demography,  if the 'Transformation Office' is of the opinion that members of its critical leadership are resisting the transformation. No sense in being sentimental and emotional about this if the Management is serious about the change

7. Great Communications :

Strategy and it's execution, through this journey needs to be laced with strong communications which should prompt an on going 'call for action' in line with the strategy. No scope should be left for rumour mongering and this can happen only when supported by strong positive messaging through out.

We lay so much of importance on evolving the strategy that we start believing that once developed it will start giving results by itself. How much wrong could we be. We forget that strategies need to be Executed. Your Word and PowerPoint needs to be ably backed by MS Projects to ensure execution of the strategy at the ground level.