Time and again, companies find themselves far from their strategic goals as the
end of the year pulls closer. While 88% of the people in authority positions agree
that yielding results from the company’s strategy is important, only 2% of them
are confident about achieving 80% to 100% of the organization’s objectives.
Why is that?
The problem doesn’t lie in designing strategy but the execution. About 80% of
the managerial staff are confident about their company’s ability to craft a
strategy, but only 44% have the same confidence for its execution.
Statistics show that organization leaders have all the right reasons for this
wavering confidence since only 10% of the companies actually end up meeting
two-thirds of their objectives while the rest achieve less than 60%.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at strategy execution and how it’s linked to
corporate performance.
What is Strategy Execution?
In simple terms, designing strategy is the act of making a plan for the organization, while
strategy execution refers to its implementation. However, the concept is much broader
than that, spanning over different organizational tiers and principles.
First off, companies need to realize that strategy execution is what connects them to
great performance.
Rather than being a concise area, it’s a vast concept without well-defined borders. Thus, it
includes everything from defining individual goals to budgeting - basically, things that help
the company meet its mission.
Most companies categorize strategy execution under strategy making. But strategy
execution is a discipline itself, with its different rules, practices, principles, challenges, and
likely pitfalls.
More importantly, strategy execution isn’t one person or one department’s job. Everyone
from the blue-collar employee to the company’s CEO is involved in strategy steering and
management. Sure enough, the roles may be different, but everyone’s contribution is
necessary.
To put it briefly, strategy execution is the seamless integration of individual performance
with the larger organizational goals. While it may sound simple, doing this isn’t exactly a
walk in the park.
The Harvard Business Review reports that companies lose 40% to 60% of their ‘strategic
potential’ in the implementation phase. That’s why it’s important for organizations to
bridge this gap if they want to see their strategies in action.
Even with all hands on deck, strategy execution takes some time. The senior employees at
the company can come up with a strategy at their business retreat in just a week or a
month. But strategy execution is not possible in the same duration. In some cases, it takes
years. Think of strategy curation as a sprint and implementation as a marathon.