Research

• 67% of strategies fail because of poor execution.
• Even in top-performing companies with “clearly articulated strategies,” 71% of employees cannot recognise their own company’s strategy in a multiple-choice question.
• Moreover, 85% of leadership teams spend less than one hour per month on strategy, and 50% spend no time at all on strategy.
• Communication in the workplace statistics meanwhile confirms that only 5.9% of organisations are in the habit of communicating their goals on a daily basis.

Statement

Enhancers of this driver

• Regular strategy meetings. In companies that consistently meet their strategic plans and goals, leadership teams meet for 4-8 hours once a month.
• A majority (92%) of organisations reported not tracking the key performance indicators to tell them how well they are doing in competition.
• Cascading the strategy from the corporate level down to the functional level will provide a significant amount of clarity for your teams
• Compensation linked to strategy execution
• A culture that promotes strategy execution, and rewards teamwork, ambition, agility and a willingness to change

Detractors of this driver

• Not holding people accountable for performing the strategic activity.
• A culture that does not promote strategy execution and does not reward teamwork, ambition, agility and a willingness to change.
• Not having a management routine that consists of a meeting calendar, reporting protocol and communication schedule; to drive a culture of accountability and execution.
• 70% of middle managers and more than 90% of front-line employees have compensation not linked to the corporate strategy.

Individual

• Think about, update, and map out your strategic objectives at least every quarter.
• Develop a quarterly plan that has your top 3 projects/activities.
• Focus on Alignment. Seek agreement with your manager on these top three projects/activities.

Leaders

• Understand and share the company’s strategy with the team.
• Look for ways to help employees connect their activities to their strategic outcomes. For example, before beginning any project, have team members create a project charter that defines the business case. Having team members describe the benefits, costs, and financial impact of a project will help them better connect their actions to the organisation’s bottom line.
• Share your quarterly plan with your team so that they can develop priorities from your plan.

Organisation

• Make sure that employees have access to the company’s strategic plan. Unfortunately, a mere 27% of employees and 42% of managers have access to their company’s strategic plan.
• Align IT and HR functions with corporate strategy. Unfortunately, two-thirds of IT and HR functions are not aligned with their corporate strategy.

• Ensure you plan weekly - allocate your time based on importance and strategic impact.
• In your planning session, at the end of each week, look at your quarterly plan and timebox necessary actions into your calendar in the following week.
• Protect your time in advance.
• Create regular placeholders in your calendar for important work.

• Allocate resources across business units to support strategic initiatives. Just 20% of managers think their organisations do well in allocating people across business units to support strategic initiatives.
• Once goals are set, ask your employees to explain how they plan to meet them. Have them break goals down into tasks and set interim objectives, especially if they have large or long-term projects.
• Ensure employees know critical measures of success so they can track their own specific behaviours that lead to accomplishment.
• Monitor progress by staying on top of employee progress. By doing this, you will help head off any troubles early on.
• Signal that you are partners in achieving goals.

• Don’t stop at the top. Hold discussions about company performance and goals with staff members at all levels, not just upper management. Understanding how their role contributes to the organisation can help employees boost their performance.
• Training leaders to review both long-term and short-term goals weekly. Even your high-performing employees need ongoing feedback and coaching.

• Practice delegating. Delegating things that you are good at and not good at requires different approaches—both free up time to work on high priorities.
• Break goals down into tasks and set interim objectives, especially if it’s a large or long-term project. Consider and communicate appropriate milestones.
• Evaluate possible risks and how you plan to manage them?

• Ask your employee what monitoring and feedback would be most helpful to her, especially if the task is particularly challenging or something they are doing for the first time.
• Communicate regularly with the team on indicators of progress on these top priorities.
• Make strategic execution discussions ongoing.
• Look for opportunities such as staff meetings, performance reviews and regular check-ins to communicate how individuals’ contributions benefit the business.
• Build relationships with employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you if and when problems arise.
• Remember when things go wrong that very few of us reach our goals without some road bumps along the way.
• Offer encouragement and empathy and help with solutions.

Communicate what matters
• Share the vision. Your company or organisation probably already has a clearly defined mission and vision (if not, create one). The more challenging next step is to spend time communicating that vision so each employee gains a solid understanding of their role in helping the company achieve it.
• The responsibility to continuously communicate the strategy lies 100% on the shoulders of top leadership – and to do it in a way that resonates with their employees.