That's a tough question in today's environment. Supply chain issues, rising prices, labor shortages, the list keeps getting longer.
As a business owner or CEO, you know that some of these are out of your control. But you also know you have to deal with these issues and protect your company. What will you do differently?
My suggestion is to deal effectively with those areas you can control. We all agree death and taxes are above our pay-grade, but opportunities exist for strong companies to secure profitable growth from weaker ones.
One way to become stronger is to put plans in place to deal with the things you can impact that provide the best ROI of your time and capital.
Start with a solid understanding of your business as it exists today. I don’t mean an assumption of what you think, I mean a deep dive that challenges you to defend your assumptions. Get a solid baseline. The strategic planning process, done well is where this starts.
Strategic planning is underutilized simply because execution is weak, and the attitude is “I’ve tried it, and nothing came of it.” That’s true of course, a strategy on a shelf doesn’t execute itself!
Does a strategy execution program work?
The following table is the result of a study done by The BalancedScorecard Collaborative, of 143 organizations.
YES
The table shows that 70% of those organizations that had a strategy execution process in place reported superior performance, as opposed to only 27% without a process.
Is a formal strategy document and execution process necessary?
The following table is another result of the study done by the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative and is titled “Best Practices in Strategy Execution.”
OU HAVE A FORMAL
P
ROCESS FOR
PERFORMERS
My suggestion is to deal effectively with those areas you can control. We all agree death and taxes are above our pay-grade, but opportunities exist for strong companies to secure profitable growth from weaker ones.
Takeaways:
• Strategy development without a formal execution plan is a daydream.
• Every organization has room for significant improvement.
• You should manage the things you can control gain the best possibleROI so that you are in a better position to deal with the things you can’t control.
• Infrastructure ,key measurements, management incentives all need to be realigned so that they support changing the business as well as running the business.
• Vision, value proposition and strategy must be driven from the top and communicated to every level of the organization.
• Consistency and accountability are a must.
• Effective strategy development and execution delivers results.
• A clear vision and sound value proposition that provides real value to your customers delivers results.
• Strategy development and execution is not a once per year effort, it’s a monthly, quarterly and annual cycle.
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