Strategic Planning and Execution for Business Growth

You have specified organizational goals and come up with a strategic plan. Now, how can you ensure that it is done perfectly?

Strategy execution can be regarded as the implementation of the strategic plan toward achieving organizational goals. The process of strategy execution features essential components like systems, daily structures, and operational goals you would set up within your team for achieving success.

Even the most successful strategic plans can turn into a failure when you do not execute them perfectly. As a matter of fact, poor execution is a highly common incident. As per a study report, it is estimated that around 48 percent of companies fail towards reaching half of the respective strategic targets. Let us help you understand how you can equip your entire team to implement the strategic plans effectively.

Top Ways to Ensure Successful Strategy Execution

Strategy execution is implementing the strategic plan defining particular tasks and organizational goals. Strategic execution leverages systems, processes, and a series of relevant decisions toward clarifying goals for the respective employees. It also involves defining actions or steps the organization is expected to undertake to achieve the respective goals.

Some important steps for strategy execution are −

Committing to a Strategic Plan

Before you go ahead with strategic execution, it is crucial to make sure that all stakeholders and decision-makers agree on the given strategic plan.

As per a study report, it is revealed that around 71 percent of employees within organizations having a weak execution strategy are second-guessed. This is in opposition to 45 percent of employees from organizations having stronger execution.

When you commit to a dedicated strategic plan before starting the implementation process, it will ensure that teams and decision-makers are effectively aligned on the same set of goals. This helps in creating a shared understanding of large-scale strategic plans across the entire organization.

Strategies are never stagnant. They should continue evolving with new opportunities and challenges. Communication is pivotal to making sure that your entire team commences on the same page in the strategic planning process while staying aligned with the passage of time.

Aligning Jobs to Strategy

A common limitation that most organizations face in the process of seamless strategy execution is that the roles of employees are not designed by keeping the particular strategy in mind. This tends to take place when employees are recruited before the formulation of the strategy. It can also occur when roles are established towards aligning with a proper company strategy.

In the process of strategy execution, jobs tend to be optimized for high performance when they effectively line up with a dedicated organizational strategy. A reliable tool like JDOT or Job Design Optimization Tool can be used by individuals for assessing whether or not organizational jobs are optimized for successful strategic execution.

The JDOT is capable of assessing the design of the job depending on crucial factors -including accountability, control, support, and influence.

Communicating Clearly to Empower Employees

As far as strategic execution is concerned, the overall power of clear, concise communication cannot be overlooked. The fact that a whopping 95 percent of employees are not able to understand or are not aware of the organization’s strategy, emphasizes the importance of communication toward empowering employees.

Strategic execution primarily depends on every member of the day-to-day decisions and tasks of the organization. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure that everyone is capable of understanding not only the broader strategic goals of the organization but also how individual responsibilities will make it possible to achieve them.

Data outlined in a study report reveals that around 61 percent of staff at stronger organizations believe that line and field employees are provided information relevant to understand the overall impact of the respective decisions and work. In a typically weak organization, only 28 percent of them believe that it is true.

To empower the employees and boost the overall performance of the organization, it is advisable to train managers to communicate effectively the overall impact of daily tasks of the employees. At the same time, managers are also expected to address the organization in a proper all-staff meeting while fostering a culture celebrating milestones toward achieving large-scale strategic goals.

Measuring and Monitoring Performance

Strategic execution depends on continuously assessing the overall progress toward specific goals. To effectively measure the performance metrics of the organization, it is crucial to determine KPIs or Key Performance Indicators during the stage of strategic planning. A numeric-based goal will be a clear, well-defined measure of the overall success of your team towards regularly tracking and monitoring performance while assessing if any modifications required should be based on the given progress.

For example, the strategic goal of your company could indicate that the customer retention rate should be increased by 30 percent by the time of 2024. When you maintain a record of the respective change in customer retention rate on a monthly or weekly basis, you can observe relevant data trends over time.

If records reveal that customer retention rate is decreasing on a monthly basis, it could be a signal that your strategic plan needs pivoting. It is because it is not driving the change you aim for.

Balancing Innovation & Control

While innovation serves to be a crucial driving force for ensuring company growth, do not allow it to derail strategic execution.

To harness innovation and ensure ample control over the ongoing strategic implementation, you should aim at developing a process to evaluate barriers, challenges, and opportunities that come your way. At the same time, understand that a stagnant organization will have no room for ensuring growth. Encourage employees to go ahead with brainstorming, experimenting, and taking calculated risks with strategic initiatives in mind.

Conclusion

Setting strategic goals, coming up with a detailed plan, and executing a relevant strategy will require a unique set of skills. The development of relevant skills can have a long-lasting impact on the future performance of the organization.