What Matters Now Is Execution

It is a leader’s vision that largely defines a company’s future. It takes courage, commitment, and collaboration to turn vision into reality, fully achieving set aspirations and making a business fit for the future. The ability to achieve sustainable results quickly and consistently is what really defines high performers. Profitable growth is harder to realize in the current climate of economic volatility and any program/project investment needs to be fully leveraged.

Often, programs/projects do not yield their full potential and have disappointing outcomes, failing to achieve the positive impacts that were expected. While there can be a myriad of reasons for this, most can be overcome by a clear understanding of current organizational realities and conflicting interests. This, coupled with excellence in implementation, communicating realistic, measurable goals and incentives will significantly increase the likelihood of achieving desired results (see also my blog in regard to digital transformation). It is imperative to understand the trade-offs between delivering short-term results versus investments in long-term programs. The business needs to function seamlessly at an operational level to be able to fuel the visions that enable quantum leaps.

By valuing and enhancing proven processes, tools, and assets within an organization and leveraging existing expertise, stakeholder buy-in will be achieved more easily. Silos need to be broken down and legacy baggage ditched to enable a clear and pragmatic pathway that achieves its full potential.

I have often seen excellent strategies on paper that completely failed as they were at odds with the capacity of an organization to implement, adopt or absorb them. Additionally, we have all witnessed many excellent executions by organizations with truly empowered teams, that failed to maximize the potential gains due to a lack of external perspectives, best practice, or wider vision.

• To overcome these stumbling blocks there are several successful approaches that can be employed to aid a frictionless conduit between vision and execution:
• Recognizing the complexities and desired objectives of a specific situation. In addition to an inside perspective, put yourself in the shoes of an “outsider” to assess the situation with a fresh and unbiased pair of eyes
• Combining the above with the ability to inject proven methodologies and tools, tenacity, industry best practices, and thought leadership to deliver pragmatic, but more specifically, suitable and transparent solutions to take the business forward
• Leveraging the existing knowledge and expertise of an organization and consider pairing it with experts in execution
• Emphasizing stakeholder alignment with rigorous and agile execution, as it is crucial to long-term success.

Building trust and establishing high-performing, collaborative teams will accelerate profitable growth to enable the evolution of a business long after the project has concluded. To overcome the frequent disappointment of extraordinary vision by projects yielding less than optimal results, it is critical to define an approach to transform concept into reality and provide clear pathways to successful implementation. Only an approach designed to meet specific needs and respect the unique DNA of a business will deliver measurable successes that fully achieve aspirations.

Five steps to ensure execution excellence include:

• Anchor the program/project within the wider business context and conduct a thorough analysis of root causes/opportunities. Align stakeholders and obtain buy-in to avoid being bogged down by internal politics
• Define vision and outcomes in terms of quality but also quantity and articulate objectives clearly and concisely
• Setup for success - establish two-way planning with defined milestones and deliverables (top-down and bottom-up). Clarify the approach, the governance, the team set-up, and the time horizon before embarking on the project. It is important to put people at the forefront of the project to create high-performing and motivated cross-functional teams. Understand your internal capabilities and where you need outside input
• Delivery & execution - deliver with rigour and create a positive atmosphere while remaining pragmatic, being agile, and have the courage to tackle obstacles and risks early. Keep momentum by continuously checking objectives, stakeholders, and business outcomes
• Handover & enablement – ensure that your people and organization are fully empowered, and in the case of external resources, phase out gradually after a thorough knowledge transfer is complete

To conclude, a clear understanding of organizational realities, coupled with excellence in implementation, is essential to fully achieve your vision and aspirations. Recognizing the complexities of a situation, embracing best practices, leveraging internal expertise, and prioritizing stakeholder alignment results in long-term success. Profitable growth to enable a business to thrive well beyond project completion needs trust and collaboration.

Enduring success is the full conversion of a vision into a tangible reality and the key to achieving this is excellence in execution.

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Source: Strat-Exx Bernd Hirschle, www.strat-exx.com