Why is strategy execution so hard?

Skip Reardon gives 4 spot-on reasons to explain Why is Strategy Execution So Hard:

1. Your strategy fails to recognize the limitations of the existing organization. [This is what I refer to as another great idea killed by reality reason.

2. Your employees don’t know how the strategy applies to their daily activities. [ A 2-day event with Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles, enlightened me that we all see the world for how it answers 3 questions:

A. What's in it for me?

B. Why should I care?

C. Why should I believe?

I'm successful in promoting an initiative with any audience, to the extent I can answer those 3 questions succinctly and in a compelling manner.

3. Your organization’s business systems or processes can’t support the strategy. [See Reason Number 1.]

4. Your performance measures and rewards are not aligned with the strategy. [See Reason Number 2.a and 2.b.]

Fundamentally strategies fail because the strategist is in denial, remains in denial and/or doesn't understand why their employees are at the company. I can say that. I've been that person. I'm a recovering denial-based strategist. I've learned, am still learning, that successful anything, strategy or tactics, execution or conception, all depends on connecting Reasons 1 and 2 with answers. If you can't answer Reason 2.a-b-c, then you either have the wrong strategy or the wrong group. Either way, it ain't flying.

Solution: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Engage your employees. Ask for their input, their ideas and solutions. Listen, listen, listen. They are your brand. They have the solutions for your challenges; you for theirs.

* Confession: Skip's points are so spot-on right he makes it easy for me to riff on. Thanks, Skip. If I'm smart, it's 'cause of the people I hang out with.

Comments

[john cass]

Zane, this is a timely post for me, JIT!

I was thinking that blogging adoption can seem unrewarding from the perspective of some employees. "What's in it for me," one piece of advice I ask managers to consider is to think about paying people to blog, or at least give them the time. What are your thoughts on that idea?

[Zane]

I think it's a great idea to at least allow your staff to blog on company time. It's a perfect resource to allow them to find their voice, their passion and at the same time develop writing skills. That's a powerful combination when used to evangelize their company and its services and products, its mission, their role in it.

Your brand are the people behind it: customers, employees, vendors, family members. Your brand's message is based solely on their ability and resources to communicate it. Blogging in general and employee blogging in particular is a resource with a very positive ROI that develops those skills and at the same time furthers the reach of your brand message.

Having said all that, it's not for everyone. Not everyone in your company will want to blog.

And blogging is a resource that allows, even insists on, self-discovery. With employee blogging that means theirs personally and professionally. You WILL discover a lot of truths about your company, that person and their role and enthusiasm for their brand and its mission. Sometimes, that's not so immediately rewarding. It's awkward, to say the least.

But it's not the fault of the blog or the act of blogging. There's some disconnect, disharmony, that's being communicated. Address the disconnect, disharmony, between your staff and their corporate mission. Don't shoot the paper the messenger used to communicate. Don't shoot blogging. Shoot the disconnect. That's what's holding your company, their company, back.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea. We've done it here. And we found, not everyone wants to blog. And that's ok. There are plenty of other ways for everyone to communicate our brand and connect with each other and our customers.

But by offering it to our staff we communicated a great deal of trust and respect for them. We were, never have been, disappointed.

[John Cass]

Zane, that's a very interesting point about what you will discover about your employee's passion for a business. One of the early ideas I was very interested in when I started researching corporate blogging was the idea that blogging would elevate people who previously did not have a high profile because of their blogging. I had not really thought about it in the opposite direction. I think this point is worthy of a good post on your part. I think you have something to share here that a lot of other companies don't because you open up blogging to everyone in the company.

[Zane]

Thanks, John.

I'm getting around to it.

Hope all's well.

[john cass]

Super, all is well, working on a sncr case study.