Building strategies is one of the most critical aspects of a business as it directly impacts growth. However, it is no longer a secret that most companies struggle with strategy execution.
According to research by McKinsey, “around 70 percent of change efforts fall short of desired results.” Today, senior leaders across the globe have started to take notice of it and realized that the financial losses induced by execution failure are massive.
Building a great strategy is an amazing start. But, organizations must be able to deliver on their intent. Strategies involve changes, and the natural human tendency is to resist them. So, no matter how strong your strategy is or how fantastic your new products and services are, it will only work once it is implemented successfully. To learn the art of executing strategies one can also take an online course for entrepreneurs.
Also Watch here, 4 Step Formula for Strategic Execution by Dr Vivek Bindra:
The first step in finding the biggest challenge that comes in executing strategies is to identify the most essential problems that are acknowledged already.
There are multiple reasons why many organizations fail at the execution level. The common are listed below:
1. Ineffective or unclear communication
Whether it is a personal relationship or a professional relationship communication plays a huge role. The most common problem in strategy execution is bad communication. It means that the communication which is too little, too vague, too late, too early, too much, to the wrong people, or otherwise ineffective can be termed as bad communication. Anything that is communicated vaguely can play a hurdle when it comes to implementing important strategies.
2. Ineffective Management
Failed strategy execution is often seen as a misalignment problem. Alignment means achieving coherence and consistency between different levels of strategy: business strategy, corporate strategy, operational strategy, and functional strategy. Misalignment results in silo behavior and not everyone being on the same page.
3. Ineffective Change Management
The strategy usually involves various changes at all levels. Hence, managing change is an important aspect of strategy execution. Challenges in this area include resistance, no buy-in, lack of commitment, and keeping up appearances. These challenges are largely emotional and mindset problems that come from not engaging people throughout the organization during strategy generation and execution.
4. Ineffective Performance Management
“What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets done.” Hence, performance management is the key to successful strategy execution. If this is done ineffectively, it leads to problems such as unclear or missing objectives and targets, wrong use of measures and performance indicators (KPIs), counterproductive incentives, and failing resource allocation. If you too are facing this challenge, you can take an online business course for entrepreneurs.
5. Ineffective Project Management
Systematic follow-up and project management are two important factors that constitute good strategy execution. The lack of it is a fifth key problem in strategy execution. It comes with unclear responsibilities, missing or conflicting priorities, exceeded budgets, delays, bad time management, and poor or missing leadership at various levels in the organization.
Together, these five problems are responsible for a great share of strategy execution failure in most organizations. These challenges are not new. They have been acknowledged in the 1980s. And so have their solutions. Hence, organizations must consider these challenges and their solutions to ensure that strategies are very well executed at every stage.
Of course, strategy and execution are complex, and resolving these 5 problems can be extremely challenging. But, if there are challenges, so are their solutions.
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