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Are Your Leaders Effectively Executing on Your Organization’s Strategy?

 
Leaders Executing on Organization’s Strategy

How to Translate Strategy into Everyday Action

In an era of extended pandemic challenges, disruptions in work arrangements, and high employee turnover, it’s become increasingly difficult, yet increasingly critical that leaders stay focused on implementing the organization’s strategic vision. Unfortunately, the reality is sobering when you look at the success rates:

  • The success rate of strategy execution is incredibly low. The fail percentages found in scientific studies range from as low as 7 % to as high as 90 %, with an average of about 50% (as reported in a 2015 review article by Candido and Santos in the Journal of Management & Organization). 

  • Research from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) estimates that 50% to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on a role, regardless of whether they were an external hire or promoted from within.

  • Only 15% of employees strongly agree that the leadership of the organization makes them enthusiastic about the future.

“70% of strategic failures come from poor execution of leadership; it’s rarely for lack of smarts or vision.”
— Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Incrementally moving the needle in the positive direction can make a huge difference, as we have seen in our work with leaders and their teams. As a case in point, we recently worked with a company (whose portfolio includes iconic food brands) to strengthen their results and overcome the strategy implementation odds. Details of the program for its leaders are outlined below.

Can Organizations Be Strategic in Today's VUCA World?

It’s a great question and one we are asked from time to time. In their excellent book, “Becoming a Strategic Leader”, Hughes et al make the case that organizations need to be more agile and resilient at the same time in the face of greater volatility, uncertainty, and competitiveness. Our new reality calls for more people at all levels in the organization to be engaged in strategic leadership to ensure focus, see opportunities and influence the direction and momentum of the whole organization. Rather than thinking about strategy as an event, the authors propose that organizations become "continual learning engines" to thrive. This learning process is made up of these five elements:

  1. Assessing where we are (i.e., the organization’s competitive position)

  2. Understanding who we are and where we want to go (i.e., the organization’s aspirations)

  3. Learning how to get there (i.e., formulating strategy and determining priorities)

  4. Making the journey (i.e., translating the strategy into action/tactics)

  5. Checking our progress (i.e., evaluating performance, which starts the learning process over again)

“The best way for organizations to thrive in the face of this new reality is to become continual learning engines. In practical terms, that means that organizational strategy – the vision, the directions, and the tactics adopted to move toward success – ought to be in an ongoing state of formulation, implementation, reassessment, and revision.”
— Hughes, Richard L., et al. Becoming a Strategic Leader

Translating Strategy into Everyday Action

At JLPA, our workshop, coupled with coaching sessions, is designed to create a vision (aligned with the organization’s vision) and to turn that vision into reality against the backdrop of the seemingly constant whirlwind of everyday operational distractions. This program really hit home for our client and it can for your leaders too!

Key program ‘how-tos’ include:

  • The leader’s role in corporate, division, and team strategy

  • A strategy model for achieving the company’s vision

  • 3 primary activities of strategic leaders

  • Leadership style and the impact on leading strategy

  • Creating a vision and bold leadership

  • Ensuring communication is building team alignment

  • Cultivating relationships that increase engagement

  • Achieving wildly important goals in the midst of everyday chaos

DiSC® Work of Leaders (WOL) Assessment

Have you leveraged the Everything DiSC® Work of Leaders (WOL) Assessment?

WOL provides a structure for helping each leader not only assess his/her leadership behavior style but also leadership strengths in three key competencies:

  1. Creating a clear and shared vision

  2. Building alignment around that vision

  3. Executing to the defined strategies and goals

 
 

Using WOL provides valuable insights and engages leaders in the organization, enabling executives to rapidly generate insights, strategies, and goals for the future success of the organization.

Don’t let the day-to-day consume your strategic energy!

To learn more about our workshops, contact me, Jonathan Parker at: jonathanlparker@journeycounts.com 

Reading & References

 
LeadershipPam Grosickistrategy, execution, leadership, work of leaders