Strategy – The HOW

The How? The multidimensional question to answer !!!!

I am reminded of Duryodhana’s rant to Krishna when he was asked to not wage a war. He says ”I know what’s right but am unable to indulge in it, I know what’s wrong but am unable to refrain from it”. A lot of organizations fail to translate their strategy into execution. You can survive without a strategy but cannot, without disciplined execution. Without strategy, you might not create a brand but will continue to rake in profits and that’s not so bad. Various factors play a role in this. Culture, execution plan, milestones, monitoring, business process improvement, Learning and development are all components of the HOW.

Culture can eat strategy for breakfast . It’s important to get the culture of the company honed to execution and therein lies the most important aspect of an organization. A lot of CEO’s get into an equitable and democratic engagement with their employees. Though this does imbibe a culture of participative management, it’s a very thin line that needs to be handled, when it comes to the final decision making. Encourage ideating, debating and critical thinking, but as a CEO, ensure that the decision is yours and ensure that the execution is theirs. This is the culture that fosters not only a contributive and participative work environment but also ensures a disciplined execution focus. Get the execution plan reviewed in all details with every aspect of the actionable discussed for clarity and simplicity. The solution to a complex problem needs to be broken down into simple, actionable steps with clear milestones. The review mechanism for discipline needs to be in place with prefixed time slots and, most importantly, a clear agenda. Meandering discussions in these meetings can lead to diffusion in execution.

You can’t improve that which you don’t measure, and you can’t measure that which you don’t monitor. The tools that are used to measure these actionable and milestones need to be in place or implemented with tremendous urgency. Responsibility needs to be fixed for every business process that impedes the execution and clear the path for the team. Most times, the execution team will come back with reasons when you ask for results. That’s the first sign of danger. Your flags should be up. Either accept the constraint and get the team to work around the constraint or clear the path by getting the reasons rectified. Be decisive in those meetings and any acceptance of a reason will lead to encouraging a behaviour of REASONS in your team. Appreciate results, appreciate people who come with suggestions for overcoming the hurdles, appreciate and reward people who deliver without reasons and that would encourage the team to understand that their success is dependant not on finding the holes in the plan but overcoming them and delivering results.

Identify areas of improvement for each of your team members and enable them to educate, enable, and empower themselves and their teams. The reins are in your hands. The power of the horses is wielded by the reins, and it is incumbent upon you to garner these into a cohesive, directed team that prides in excellence. In excellence lies the execution outcome. As I want to say, once a strategy is in place, we need to get into a violent execution of the same for us to take the organization to the pinnacle of success.

All the very best.

P.S. I have finished my series on strategy with this, and I look forward to your comments, suggestions, feedback, and also any queries that you may have that will trigger my thoughts for my upcoming blogs.