{"id":6113,"date":"2016-09-28T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/?p=6113"},"modified":"2020-07-11T07:42:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T05:42:48","slug":"strategy-execution-capabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/blog\/strategy-execution-capabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategy Execution Capabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Tozer is Visiting Fellow at Henley Business School. Here he wins constantly new insights in the topic Strategy Execution. <span id=\"result_box\" lang=\"en\">In his blog post &#8211; published September 27, 2016 &#8211;\u00a0he describes capabilities that are necessary to execute strategies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Strategy articulates a decision to complete an organizational-level task, or achieve a defined \u2018end-state\u2019.\u00a0 It provides coherence between external context, actual capability, investment and strategic objectives. It outlines how those strategic objectives will be achieved \u2014how businesses will compete and how public sector organizations will optimize service delivery.\u00a0 <strong>Strategy development<\/strong> is merely an intellectual exercise if it is not implemented; even <strong>\u2018the best\u2019 strategy may be worthless if it is not well executed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>What does the research say? Will it build investors&#8217; confidence?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>61% of businesses struggle to bridge the <strong>strategy\/implementation gap<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>In the last 3 years, only 56% of strategic initiatives have been successful.<\/li>\n<li>Developing \u2018<strong>strategy execution leadership<\/strong>\u2019 is high priority for the best executors.<\/li>\n<li>Companies with \u2018strategy execution leadership\u2019 implement 20% more strategic initiatives than others.<\/li>\n<li>Companies investing in \u2018strategy execution leadership\u2019 report significantly better financial performance than their peers.<\/li>\n<li>62% fail to lead change effectively.<\/li>\n<li>Strategy execution quality is more important than quality of the strategy itself.<\/li>\n<li>Organizations using a strategy execution system are 7.5 times more likely to be high performing than low performing.<\/li>\n<li>67% of Board members and CEOs did not believe that their current leadership development approach was enabling leaders to successfully execute strategy.<\/li>\n<li>Only 26% of companies <strong>integrate leadership development with strategy execution<\/strong>. Those that do are 22.7 times more likely to be high performing organizations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Research also shows that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Up to 70% of behaviour in organizations is shaped by \u2018environment\u2019<\/strong>. (The behavioural consequences of structure, policies, processes, systems and notably leaders&#8217; behaviour \u2014especially the example of your immediate boss).<\/li>\n<li>People (and especially \u2018clever people\u2019) have three key needs to be satisfied to ensure intrinsic motivation \u2014<strong>Autonomy<\/strong> (trusting people with control over their work), <strong>Mastery<\/strong> (regular feedback, formal development, and opportunity to use their full capability) and <strong>Meaning<\/strong> (sense of purpose and belonging).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Prof Andrew Kakabadse\u2019s global research project into 12,500 top teams and 5,000 boards shows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Organizations adopt one of these differing philosophies \u2014either \u2018<strong>rationalist, strategy-led<\/strong>\u2019 (strategy is defined; others must follow); or \u2018<strong>strategy is contextualised, and value-delivery led<\/strong>\u2019 (engagement and alignment are optimized, and context questioned, on a dynamic basis).\u00a0 The latter type outperforms the former.<\/li>\n<li>The long-term sustainable future lies with the <strong>purpose\/mission<\/strong> based enterprise supported by deeply held <strong>values<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Effective decision-making requires <strong>diversity<\/strong> and <strong>evidence-led dialogue<\/strong> to overcome the distorting effects of \u201cpersonality\u201d, secure engagement and align thinking<\/li>\n<li>34% of top team members are divided on mission\/purpose, value and strategy.<\/li>\n<li>85% of boards are out of touch with no common view on what constitutes competitive advantage.<\/li>\n<li>82% of organizations do not engage business unit general managers in strategy development, usually resulting in half-hearted execution of plans that they do not believe in<\/li>\n<li>Where engagement is highest, organizations enjoy predictable gains.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2018Strategy\u2019 has been the focus for both business schools and large consultancies for many years; meanwhile \u2018execution\u2019 has received relatively little attention.\u00a0 Research of 10 and 20 years ago produced similar results to the above so it seems that little of practical value has been learned about strategy execution and building and embedding \u2018strategy execution capability\u2019 as an organizational, systemic capability and source of competitive advantage.<\/p>\n<p>How many executives have worked in an organization which has a systemic, systematic, scalable and dynamic approach to the development and seamless execution of strategy?\u00a0 If few have, then that would explain why some find it hard to conceive of what such a \u2018system\u2019 could look, sound and feel like to work in.\u00a0 This is reinforced by many leadership development programmes which focus on \u2018individual leadership behaviour\u2019 but which offer little by way of &#8216;systemic approaches&#8217; for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Research and all practical experience shows that <strong>the most rapid performance gains are made by \u201ccreating clarity\u201d and \u201cemotional engagement\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><strong>Clarity<\/strong> <\/span>itself builds confidence, and is the understanding of and alignment to \u2018higher intent\u2019 + clear priorities\/role + delegated accountability, and authority aligned to that accountability.<\/p>\n<p>Alignment means direction and priorities are those that the CEO would give if he\/she was there to advise \u2014alignment of thinking, systems, structure, protocols, plans, objectives, tasks. Understanding results from insights (awareness and analysis), and foresight (deductive reasoning and judgement). Unfortunately &#8216;clarity&#8217; is a relative concept \u2014many people think they are &#8216;clear&#8217; but probing what &#8216;strategy&#8217; really means and comparing that understanding to others, shows that &#8216;clarity&#8217; has not been created.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><strong>Emotional engagement<\/strong><\/span> is a combination of inspiration, and a sense of confidence, responsibility, belonging and pride; and the discretionary effort to think, act, follow up and follow through.<\/p>\n<p>Emotional engagement is mostly secured through your immediate leader\u2019s behaviour (the team\u2019s immediate environment) \u2014 a display of shared values, regular interaction, meaningful dialogue, using team members full capability, trusting people and so on.\u00a0 Only in part is engagement induced through the wider environment of executive leadership example, the consequences of policies, processes and structure, corporate identity and reputation etc.<\/p>\n<p>What is often overlooked, is that the way the mechanism for creating clarity is used \u2014the \u2018social process\u2019 or leadership behaviour with which the \u2018conceptual process\u2019 to create clarity is applied\u2014 can be the primary mechanism for securing \u2018emotional engagement\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8216;system&#8217; that you design should routinely share meaningful information to set context, exploit feedback, initiative, and expertise, and enable timely better-quality decisions by those best placed to make them. It should be scalable and facilitate work both within departments and across boundaries; and it should end reliance on \u2018force of personality\u2019 and on individual personalities. Such a system can build systemic &#8216;mutual trust and confidence&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>An effective approach to strategy execution in organizations, will therefore enable all leaders at all levels and across the matrix<\/strong>, to create clarity and simultaneously engender emotional engagement, on a systemic and dynamic basis \u2014dynamic because strategy needs to be continuously reviewed in the light of actual progress and changing circumstances, and to ensure that what is strategically desirable remains tactically possible: and to do all this in such a way that autonomy, mastery and meaning are provided.<\/p>\n<p>The organizational agility and adaptability resulting from such an approach enables both strategic innovation (step-change, disruption) and tactical innovation (incremental, continuous improvement) to proceed without the &#8216;internal friction&#8217; that all too often is encountered. Experience shows that &#8216;system design&#8217; which meets these requirements this can double productivity and revenue, and reduce budgeted investment by up to 60%\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014 yes, case studies do exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Tozer is Visiting Fellow at Henley Business School. Here he wins constantly new insights in the topic Strategy Execution. In his blog post &#8211; published September 27, 2016 &#8211;\u00a0he describes capabilities that are necessary to execute strategies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[691],"tags":[312,711,362,286],"class_list":["post-6113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategy-execution","tag-capabilities","tag-engagement-en","tag-evidence","tag-strategy-execution"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6925,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6113\/revisions\/6925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strimgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}