5 Pitfalls to Avoid In Strategy Execution

For the past two weeks, I’ve written about the important distinction between strategy implementation and strategy execution. For the purposes of this post, I’ll assume you’ve implemented your new strategy in the ways I talked about here. Now it’s time to execute the plan. Plenty of studies that indicate less than 30% of strategic plans are executed successfully. There are a myriad of reasons for this but I want to focus on five major ones you must avoid.

• You've formulated a strategy that is too broad or too non-specific. No organization can be all things to all people. Define your audience well, build your programs to serve their needs and resist the temptation to say yes to everyone and everything. Make sure your staff knows where you're going and, more importantly, where you're not. To quote Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

• Your staff wasn’t involved in the formulation of the plan so they feel no sense of ownership.  To be clear, by staff, I mean ALL of them, not just your senior leadership. They don’t have to be in every strategy development meeting but they do need to be kept in the loop and understand why the strategy is changing. Better yet, make them a part of the process of development.

• Your members heard about the new strategic plan for the first time in a press release. These are the people that have invested in your organization, both financially and emotionally and hopefully for a long time. If you’re going to change course, don’t surprise them. Better yet, get their input along the way.

• The plan calls for lots of new programs and initiatives but none of the old programs are eliminated. Unless you can afford to hire a bunch of new staff, you’ll experience a bandwidth problem pretty quickly. Look for opportunities to eliminate programs/products that don't support the new strategic goals.

• You don’t have metrics to evaluate your progress toward the new goal(s). If you’re expecting the organization to evolve into something new, how will you know when you’ve succeeded? Progress needs to measurable and routinely assessed.

As I said, there are many other ways to undermine the execution of a new strategic plan, but if you avoid these you'll have a much greater chance to succeed.

Sometimes You Need To Just Let It Go

Do you remember the TLC television show from a while back called “What Not To Wear?” In each episode, a friend or family member would nominate someone who they felt was in dire need of a makeover to improve their chance of success in life. A big part of the makeover was a complete reworking of their wardrobe by two style experts. Prior to watching them shop for new clothes, the show hosts would have them model three outfits from their existing closet and explain why they felt good about them. As you can imagine, and I understand this was staged for tv, the outfits were terrible. When asked why they wore them, the makeover-ee (yes, I just invented that word) almost always gave the same answer.

"Because it’s comfortable"

The clothes were usually pieces they had owned for a long time and grown fond of. They were often ill-fitting and worn in the best case and inappropriate for the places they would wear them in the worst case. They simply justified the outfit based on the fact that they had always worn it and it felt good to wear. I’m not suggesting comfort doesn’t matter, but sometimes, you just have to let it go.

So, why have I just devoted two paragraphs to a television show about makeovers in a blog that is supposed to be about business? Because organizations do the same thing! I believe that up to 20% of the things that most, if not all, organizations do has so little value to their strategic goals as to be immeasurable. Programs, products, services and internal operations all are subject to this kind of resource drain. Why does this happen? You guessed it.

"Because it’s comfortable"

The justifications for this kind of waste are many. You’ve heard them all before.

• We’ve always done it this way (this one makes my blood boil)
• Customer XYZ loves this product (maybe, but are they the only one?)
• We’re really good at providing this service (but does anyone care?)
• Member ABC loves this program (again, are they the only one?)

I could go on, and so could you.

Unless you’re Apple, Google or Amazon, your organization probably has limited resources. If you’ve wasted up to 20% of those resources doing things which have little to no value, what opportunities are you missing that could be tackled if you freed up that time, money and manpower? By the way, Apple, Google, and Amazon have limited resources also, their limits are just higher than yours and mine.

In a recent conversation with the CEO of a very successful company in a technology business, I was somewhat surprised to hear that she recognized there were things her company was doing that didn’t have the value it used to have. She described the task of identifying it as complicated, time-consuming and maybe even overwhelming. I told her, at least in my opinion, it wasn’t that complicated and that she had already taken the first and most important step - recognizing the problem existed.

There is a relatively simple exercise I’ve used in a number of the organizations I worked for called The Four Boxes. It challenges an organization to examine everything they do and put it into one of these four “boxes”

Box 1: Things we do well that our customers/members value highly

Box 2: Things we do but could be better at, that our customers/members value highly

Box 3: Things we do well but our customers/members don’t value highly

Box 4: Things we do but not that well, that our customers/members don’t value highly

Obviously, in a perfect world, everything would be in Box 1. If you live in that perfect world, let me know where you are, I want to join you.
Box 2 is your area of opportunity. You have demand, you just need to get better!
Box 3 is an opportunity area too, but also a danger zone that requires you to look for new markets/customers.
Box 4 is, well, a problem. I’ve heard people say that their organization doesn’t have anything that fits in Box 4. That’s great if it’s true, but it almost never is if they're honest.

This exercise requires representation and involvement from all parts of the organization to be effective since every function will see things from a different perspective. It can be completed in 1-2 days (depending on the size of the organization) when led by an experienced facilitator. Done well, it allows the organization to identify those areas where effort and investment are out of balance with return and potential and present opportunities to just let it go and free up valuable resources to pursue those new opportunities.

I've run this exercise successfully many times across both not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. You can learn more about my background and other services Association Acuity offers here, or better yet, call me at 703-341-9392. If you've enjoyed reading this post, subscribe over there on the right to receive future posts via email.

Why Strategy Implementation Must Precede Strategy Execution

Last week I wrote a post that detailed why I think strategy implementation and strategy execution are not the same things. To me, the key difference is that implementation is all about capability (are we structured to succeed?) and execution is all about the activity (what do we need to do to succeed?). This week I want to dive into the implementation pool a little deeper.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You’re the CEO of a solidly successful trade association or not-for-profit organization. Revenues are strong, your bottom line is positive, reserves are adequate and you've built a well balanced and professional staff. The needs of the industry, professionals or charity you represent are evolving and you and your Board of Directors have worked with an outside consultant to develop a new strategic plan. It identifies goals and objectives for the organization which are designed to address these changing needs. Pretty standard stuff, right? What’s next?

Get to work executing the plan of course. But wait, is your well balanced and professional staff equipped with the right skill sets to take on the new programs? Is your existing FTE count large enough to handle the new work without minimizing or even dropping some existing programs? Does your current operating budget have enough slack to build and support new programs or are you willing to tap into those reserves?

It has been my experience the answers to these questions are often some form of “not really, but we’ll find a way” or “ we have good people, they’ll adapt” or “we’ll all just have to work harder until the dust settles”. Anybody think these are good ideas? Remember, you embarked on the development of a NEW strategic plan because you recognized that changes were already happening externally. If they weren’t you probably didn’t need a NEW strategic plan. It should be obvious that if an organization is going to develop new overriding goals and objectives that the question “Should we at least consider what changes we need to make INTERNALLY?” needs to be asked and answered?

Organizations need to assess their capability to succeed before forging ahead to the execution stage. If you have great people on your staff who are ill-equipped to accomplish the new goals your strategy are you setting them up to be successful? If you’ve defined 4 new key programs that need to be launched to accomplish the goals where will the human resources come from to do that? If you have defined programs that require a new investment of $250,000 but you don’t have that money in your expense budget, how will those programs ever get built and launched?

Imagine you’re the coach of a soccer team. When you’re on defense, the goal is to stop the other team from scoring. You have the best goalie in the league on your team who leads the league in goals against and anchors a great defense. However, when your team is in control of the ball, the objective changes. As the coach, do you tell that great goalie to run upfield and try to score? Of course not, it’s not her skill set. It can be the same when an organization changes its goals. You have great talent - for what you used to do. Is that talent suited for the new tasks?

I’m not suggesting that wholesale personnel changes are in order when a new strategic plan is developed. I am suggesting that during the implementation step you need to be sure that current skill sets align with the new goals. Maybe you can train existing staff, maybe you can move people around the organization, putting them in roles where they have the best chance to succeed or maybe you need to make some changes. Just don’t assume your great linebacker will be a great running back.

What about the budget needs the new goals will require? Does the new strategic plan anticipate added revenues that will fund the new programs? Even if it does, that sometimes doesn’t happen right away. This is a perfect opportunity to assess ALL of your existing programs and consider sunsetting some that are no longer relevant to the new strategic plan. This typically frees up both expense dollars and manpower but is often the hardest thing for mission-driven organizations to do. Be brave, take action and be transparent to both your staff and members about why these programs are ending.

These critical elements of the strategy implementation, if considered and addressed up front will increase your odds of a successful strategy execution greatly.

I welcome your comments and feel free to share!

Strategy Implementation versus Strategy Execution

In the previous post I drew a distinction between implementing and executing a strategy. I'm sure some of you use these terms interchangeably in relation to that thing you do after the strategic plan is published. Heck, I'm sure I've used them interchangeably in the past.

However, during the course of developing Association Acuity, I did a lot of reading and thinking about strategy and that next step, you know, the challenging one of making the dream come true. One of my Aha! moments was when I realized that implementation was a step along the way to execution and that without it, execution might not be possible. Allow me to explain.

Business strategy is most often expressed in the form of a strategic plan. This plan is designed to define major goals and objectives for the organization. Once this is established, it is very typical for the organization to ask the question, "how are we going to do this?" I think there is a more important question that sometimes doesn't get asked; "Can we do this with our current organizational structure?" You see, implementation is all about capability, not activity. Without capability, activity (execution) will be at best, inefficient and in the worst case, unsuccessful.

Implementation is that step where the following questions must be asked and answered:

• Do we have the enough assets (human, financial) to achieve the goals of the plan?
• Do we have the right assets (skill sets, talent) to achieve the goals of the plan?
• Have we gained the explicit buy-in to the plan from the key stakeholders (Board, members, staff)?
• Do we have the right value proposition for our members/customers that support the plan? 

If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then the plan is implemented and it is appropriate to move on to execution. If not, there is still work to do. When a plan is implemented, execution becomes all about the actions that an organization takes to achieve the best results possible from a fully implemented strategy.

These three concepts, strategy, implementation, and execution are co-dependent parts of the proverbial three-legged stool. Each is individually critical to the stability and success of the organization. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas!

Do we really need another consultant? (Part 1 of 2)

Just what the world needs, another consultant, right? I hear you. And this from a guy who spent most of his career with a healthy disdain for consultants! In this case, however, I believe there is an underserved need for what I’m proposing to do with Association Acuity. 

First, let’s start with what I’m not proposing to do. I’m not crazy enough to try to go head to head with the strategy consultants who are out there helping trade associations and professional societies develop strategic plans. There are a lot of them, and to be fair, many of them are quite good at it. Nope, my career has led me to a much more practical part of the organizational process. You see, I'm an operations guy. Always have been. 

What I’m proposing is to help these organizations implement their strategic plans. Possibly even execute them, but that’s different and the topic for a future blog post. You see, it’s been my experience that organizations are more than willing to commit significant resources in the form of time, manpower and money to the development of a strategic plan. Senior management, working with the Board of Directors and often one of the aforementioned strategy consultants, develop a beautifully crafted document that speaks to, you guessed it, strategy. When it’s complete, there is usually a celebration followed by the Board Members heading back to their day jobs and the consultant happily moving on to the next client. What happens next? Well, the CEO and the senior staff are tasked with fulfilling the goals and objectives of the plan and reporting back to the Board regularly on the progress. This is when the struggle begins. Everyone’s intentions are certainly pure and for a while, the focus remains on the plan. More often than not, however, the real world intrudes in the form of unexpected member requests (demands?), unexpected budgetary constraints, unplanned organizational change or any one of a list of other day-to-day challenges that occur in every organization.

When this happens the best case is that the strategic plan is revisited in Board meetings when the CEO is asked to report on progress. The less desirable outcome is that the plan ends up in a desk drawer, or an electronic file these days, and is all but forgotten while the organization strives to put out fires, respond to member needs and keep afloat financially.

Sound familiar? I hope not, but just in case it does, there are ways to get your day-to-day operations back in alignment with your strategic plan and, more importantly, keep it there. I know some of you may be thinking that plans aren’t static and need to morph and evolve as the external factors impacting the operation change. I couldn’t agree more! Don’t worry, this process allows for the flexibility to adjust on the fly.

In part two of this blog, I’ll talk about some of the key elements that need to be in place to achieve this type of alignment and why they are critical.