Author of The Gauntlet
“Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night,
with no lights, while looking out the back window. The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker
Companies rely on strategic planning to help create their future. But often, the outcomes of strategic planning fall short of projections; 90% of strategies are never fully implemented.
To be fair, few strategies survive first contact with the market. Changing circumstances can quickly undermine plan premises. Expecting this scenario, planners develop contingency plans that react to anticipated changed realities, while preserving the intended strategic direction for the business.
The key to successful strategy execution is this ability to adapt, which relies upon strategy buy-in from stakeholders. Early in the planning process, it’s vital to identify appropriate, cross-functional internal stakeholders, plus key affected customers and suppliers, and to solicit their ideas and feedback as the core plan and contingencies evolve.
Keeping these advocates aware of necessary plan adaptations over time, and continuing to seek their input, ensures that a broad array of experience, skills and resources are available to support the evolving plan actions. With more eyes and ears committed to success, barriers, opportunities, and threats are more promptly detected, accelerating decision-making and adaptation. And stakeholder buy-in is sustained as advocates recognize how their input on the evolving plan revisions have enabled their respective goals to be realized as an outcome of the successful implementation.
Since successful strategy execution is more about sensing and reacting than it is about directing and controlling, it can challenge a company’s culture. The need to quickly adapt favors more agile organizations with cultures that encourage collaboration, innovation, autonomy, and shared accountability. If a strategy isn’t well aligned with the company’s culture, then securing buy-in from those responsible for implementing it, may be the most significant barrier to success.
How often has your strategy execution delivered expected results?
