“Bridg­ing the gap: turn­ing strat­e­gy into reality”

Orga­ni­za­tions often fail to achieve their strate­gic objec­tives due to a lack of crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties and work habits span­ning strat­e­gy plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion. Imple­men­ta­tion fail­ure can reach as high as 90% — over­es­ti­ma­tion of the ben­e­fits, high­ly dynam­ic oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment and cul­tur­al resis­tance are some exam­ples. With a total spend of $3.4 tril­lion dol­lars glob­al­ly on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the urge for a suc­ces­full imple­men­ta­tion is real.

The Econ­o­mist sur­veyed 600 exec­u­tives across sev­en coun­tries and six indus­tries. They indi­cat­ed notable num­bers: only 14% of the exec­u­tives expressed con­fi­dence in their com­pa­ny’s deci­sion mak­ing gov­er­nance, 84% rec­og­nized the need for improve­ment of data-dri­ven deci­sion mak­ing, and only 20% of the exec­u­tives are con­fi­dent in resource allo­ca­tion for strategy-implementation.

This arti­cle presents five key rec­om­men­da­tions for improv­ing strat­e­gy implementation:

  1. Align key stake­hold­ers dur­ing both strat­e­gy design and imple­men­ta­tion. Ear­ly engage­ment in the strate­gic plan­ning process grounds the strat­e­gy on busi­ness real­i­ties, encour­ages buy-in through trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cre­ates a pur­pose­ful con­nec­tion between stake­hold­ers’ dai­ly tasks and the over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy.  Ensure that you have a uni­fied report­ing sys­tem with a trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion framework.
  2. Dri­ve account­abil­i­ty through tar­get­ed out­come-based per­for­mance met­rics, mon­i­tor­ing and holis­tic data man­age­ment sys­tems. These mea­sures dri­ve account­abil­i­ty by pro­vid­ing clear, mea­sur­able and objec­tive cri­te­ria for suc­cess, with a con­tin­u­ous track­ing sys­tem. Cre­ate a uni­fied track­ing sys­tem, with no data in silos and frag­ment­ed over dif­fer­ent departments.
  3. Pri­or­i­tize strate­gic ini­tia­tives to improve resource allo­ca­tion. Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion can sur­face nec­es­sary trade-offs and free up the resources required for suc­cess. Pri­or­i­tize based on met­rics to assess whether finances. skills, tech­nol­o­gy and time can be applied to the most valu­able adding initiatives.
  4. Embed agili­ty in strat­e­gy design, plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion. Com­pa­nies should fos­ter agili­ty through respon­sive, cus­tomer-cen­tric and data-dri­ven approach­es inte­grat­ed into cul­ture as well as gov­er­nance, ana­lyt­ics and report­ing practices.
  5. Build a cul­ture that rein­forces strate­gic objec­tives. Lead­ers should think care­ful­ly about whether orga­ni­za­tion­al val­ues and gov­er­nance struc­tures align with strate­gic objec­tives. Cre­ate a bot­tom up — and a top down approach.

These five rec­om­men­da­tions are inter­de­pen­dent build­ing blocks for bridg­ing the strategy–implementation gap. They form a blue­print for change in an age of agili­ty, where exec­u­tives need to be deeply involved in exe­cu­tion while remain­ing mind­ful that strate­gies must be dynamic.

Read the full report here!