Execution is the Culprit

I hope everyone has a nice holiday, I ate way too much but I got to see my whole family. One of the benefits of being home was that I had the pleasure of spending the past week at the Chief Strategy Officer Summit in New York City. What’s better than spending 2 days in the greatest city in the world learning about the latest and greatest ideas in planning? I learned a lot while sitting through various sessions began to notice a trend that I talk about all the time! The biggest problem with strategy doesn’t revolve around coming up with the ideas, it always comes down to doing the work.

I just read an article penned by Ken Cook titled, “The key elements to any strategic plan” and he touches upon the plan execution problem. I think he sums it perfectly by saying, “The relationship between strategy and execution is an interesting one. Great strategy supported by great execution can accelerate success in terms of both time and results. Pour it on. Poor strategy supported by poor execution is a recipe for disaster. The results are terrible, so you need to change both. The challenge is when there is a mismatch between strategy and execution. When results are okay, but not as strong as expected, we begin to question everything because the underlying cause is uncertain. When this happens, look first to execution to fix things. Seven out of ten times, execution is the culprit.”

We’re all aware of projects that didn’t go well because the team met, talking about the project, and never worked on it again. It’s not because people don’t care it’s because there’s only so much time in the day. This is why you need to be diligent in tracking your plan items and regularly meeting to discuss progress. This is not easy ladies and gentlemen, this is why I come to work every day preaching the value our results management software platform. There is a major gap between the formation of strategy and getting results and AchieveIt is here to close that gap.