How To Execute Your Plan Effectively

So how is the execution of your new strategy going so far? Have all departments within the company come together with groundbreaking unity to deliver on the promise of top management’s brilliantly conceived plan for market domination? Has your stock price soared? Is the board of directors handing out big bonus checks?

Or perhaps things haven’t gone quite so swimmingly. Well, you’re in the majority then. Indeed, according to a recent Ernst & Young study, a full 66% of corporate strategy is never executed.

Why? Because, as we all know, doing something new is hard. Organizations, and the units within them, must overcome long-standing traditions, conflicting interests, poor communication channels, and untold other devils lurking deep within the corporate culture. And they must do so with a level of coordination and deliberation that is often alien to the normal order.

“Strategy execution goes to the fabric of a company,” says Carla Miraldi, president of Cleveland-based medical imaging company Neo-Pet. All the threads have to be woven together just the right way for the process to work. Yet despite execution’s inherent difficulties, built-to-last companies have no choice but to master it. Lessons from those that have been successful in doing so provide a useful refresher course on the key tenets of getting things done.

Strategies should be built to be executed

The seeds of execution problems are planted early, often during strategy formulation. The lesson here is clear: the process of defining and designing the strategy cannot be seen as distinct from creating the plan to execute it.

Seek broad input when creating the strategy

Bill Treasurer, founder of Giant Leap Consulting in Atlanta, describes a phenomenon he calls executive asphyxiation: “The strategic plan is created by an executive inner sanctum. A group of higher-ups convene at a fancy off-site resort, spending too much time breathing their own hot air. When leaders make plans in a vacuum, they end up with no buy-in from the lower ranks.” With no upfront buy-in, your ability to execute at the unit level is DOA. Treasurer advises his clients to invite input on strategy from customers, employees, suppliers, and others who possess valuable perspectives on the company’s direction. Some firms even ask key customers to participate in a strategy formulation panel.

At Boston-based publisher Addison-Wesley/Benjamin Cummings, the best strategies often “bubble up from work teams and frontline employees,” says vice president Karen Silverio. And when lower level players help plan strategy, they develop a sense of ownership of the implementation process. Consider the approach of UK-based IT services provider CODASciSys. “We’re considering growing our division and possibly acquiring a company to complement our strengths,” says CEO Graham Steinsberg. “We’re bringing managers together to clarify our vision of what the new entity resulting from this strategy should look like. Our managers have begun thinking as a team instead of obsessing about whether they’ll still have a job after an acquisition. If they feel they’re in the driver’s seat, they focus more on the company’s interests than their own.”

Define clear objectives, tasks, and accountabilities

Understanding and defining the link between high level strategy and strategic objectives—and the necessary lower-level supporting strategic objectives—is vital. “Your strategy should take a long-term view and serve as a source of inspiration,” saysC. Davis Fogg, author of Implementing Your Strategic Plan (AMACOM, 1999). “Your strategic objectives are shorter-term efforts to move you toward that long-term vision.” In the ideal scenario, the development of the strategy and the corresponding strategic objectives are part of a single, fluid process.

Numerous experts and practitioners warn against “strategic dilution”—trying to execute too many objectives. “We break our strategy down into three or four tactical goals,” says Kevin Foster, president of Atlanta-based communications and marketing firm Macquarium, “then establish initiatives tied to those goals.”

Strategic objectives shouldn’t be too grandiose, adds Addison-Wesley’s Silverio. “I prefer to make them doable, well-defined, and realistic, instead of implying that we’re trying to do something as big as solving world hunger. Clear definition of tasks, with clear milestones, is crucial.”

The value of clearly defining individual tasks and accountabilities at this point cannot be overstated, the experts agree: strategy is executed one person and one project at a time. Equally important is universal clarity on how progress will be measured at each key stage.

CODASciSys even employs systems that offer real-time, daily feedback on the financial impact of managers’ decisions, thereby providing an ongoing measure of their ability to execute strategy. “A monthly report on a division’s profitability is meaningless,” Steinsberg says. “Managers need rapid feedback on costs they can control.”

Moving the plan forward

Even the most execution-sensitive strategy can’t be carried out on its own. Perhaps the single most important way to keep execution moving forward is a rigorous plan to sustain and build on all that great buy-in you achieved during the strategy development phase.

“Managers encourage buy-in by explaining the emotional and financial benefits of achieving the objectives—and the penalty for not achieving them,” Fogg notes. “You can formulate your strategy and bronze it, but life happens in the meantime,” Silverio adds. “New priorities crop up, people get overwhelmed. Whether someone reports to me or not, I’m always selling the strategy.”

Silverio doesn’t rely on telling people what to do. Instead, she thinks of herself as serving those responsible for execution. She asks herself what those individuals’ most pressing problems might be; for example, a decline in textbook buying among college students. She then explains how the corporate strategy will help address that problem. “Connecting strategy to people’s dreams,” Silverio says, “makes the strategy execution process personally satisfying. If I don’t take these steps, I may get the deliverable I had in mind. But I probably won’t win that person’s commitment again the next time around. So the process is just as important as the results.”

Incentives also play a large role in gaining buy-in. Silverio and Neo Pet’s Miraldi agree that rewards for strategy execution can run the gamut from bonuses and pay raises to promotions and other nonfinancial rewards. “Know what most motivates your people,” Silverio advises. “I’ve found that nonfinancial incentives, such as publicly crediting someone for contributing a great idea, can be more powerful than financial reward. Many people find it deeply satisfying to know that their ideas have been used.”

Creating cross-functional execution teams

The best strategy implementers mobilize cross-functional execution teams around each strategic objective and supporting initiative. Macquarium, for instance, recently defined four objectives that generated 27 associated teams. “Our cross-functional teams,” Kevin Foster says, “enable people to collaborate across the enterprise to ensure that each initiative supports its corresponding objective and is carried out on time.” Foster compares the effect of execution teams to that of the roots of a redwood tree: “Unlike other trees’ roots, those of a redwood are only about 10 feet deep,” he explains. “But they branch out widely and are intertwined tightly. This creates a unity that supports the tree firmly, for centuries.”

To further establish accountability, Silverio matches strategic initiatives to team leaders based on skills, experience, or personal interest in new challenges. She also makes accountability and progress public, a technique that strengthens managers’ and employees’ sense of responsibility for the initiatives they’re leading. Finally, Silverio often reminds herself that “when you see people handling execution well, for heaven’s sake, get out of their way.”

Communicate—constantly

Savvy executives make sure to constantly communicate the importance of the strategy and its implementation. Steady communication counteracts what Giant Leap’s Bill Treasurer calls corporate gravity. “Corporate gravity gives you the sensation of trying to run while your waistband is tied to a doorknob,” he says. Treasurer advises clients to continually explain the connection between the strategic initiatives managers and employees are working on and the high-level goals. “Leaders need to point out that new goals require changes in behaviors, rules, skills, and priorities,” he says. “Make it clear why the new strategy is so important. Ask people three questions: ‘Are you on board? Is your paddle in the water? And are you pulling at the same time as everyone else in the boat?’”

Steinsberg of CODASciSys adds that communication goes both ways. “I tell my managers that I expect them to listen to the corporate message, query it, and challenge it. Without challenge, I don’t get as much buy-in from them.”

Provide needed resources and tools

All the best planning won’t amount to much if leaders don’t also give people the tools and resources they need to carry out the plan, whether that’s training, information, technologies, or—perhaps most important—time. “Our people find it challenging to implement [new initiatives] while still delivering their daily work,” says Macquarium’s Foster. “But we consider time our most precious resource, so we allocate it in ways that enable people to fit new strategic priorities into their workload. We build time for such initiatives into implementation plans, using our own project-management system that we offer clients.”