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.