Realizing Success
What leads to successful performance? If we are to believe business best sellers and management gurus, high performance can be achieved by following this or that formula – these six steps, those four principles, these seven immutable laws. While appealing, all this really does is cause us to follow one fad after another and divert our attention from a more powerful insight – at its core, performance retains a large measure of uncertainty.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, research and experience suggests that when we strip away all of the hype and pretension surrounding this or that idea, in the final analysis organizational performance is driven by two things – strategy and execution. Simple enough in concept, much more challenging in practice.
Making Decisions that Matter: The Essence of Strategy
Strategy is about defining an organization’s identity (who are we and what do we do) and direction (where we are headed and how we’re going to get there). At its heart, strategy is all about making choices – focusing the energies and efforts of the entire organization on those critical decisions and courses of action that have the greatest chance of raising the organization’s chances of success in the face of an uncertain future.
Strategy is not about creating a list of vague aspirational statements. “Achieving customer delight?” “Enhancing efficiency and effectiveness!” “Unlocking shareholder value!” It is not about long-winded mission and vision statements, and pages and pages of plans and documents. It is about answering some fundamental questions: In what combinations of products and markets shall we compete? What activities shall we perform, and what shall we leave to suppliers, subcontractors, or other partners? How will we differentiate ourselves from our competitors?
Making choices and formulating strategy in the face of uncertainty involves risk and takes courage. It involves a sober assessment of external forces and a realistic evaluation of internal capabilities, resources, and resolve. It requires an understanding of the implications of different courses of action and insight into what it will take to turn strategy into action. Unfortunately, far too many organizations spend their time building plans versus making decisions.
At the end of the day, it is intelligent choices, well executed, that will help you ‘win the game’.
Aligning Leadership Behaviour: The Key to Successful Execution
If strategy is about making deliberate choices, execution is all about carrying out those choices with intention and integrity. It about the way people, working together in an organization, mobilize resources to deliver on the strategy. Senior leaders play a crucial role in executing strategy. Research has shown that top executives have considerable influence over the form and fate of their organizations – more than we sometimes care to admit. As such, the way leaders “show up” with each other and the rest of the organization makes a big difference to successful strategy implementation. Leaders must ensure that their behaviours are aligned with the strategy – tailored to the needs of the organization.
While some leadership behaviours, like a bias for action, are generic and key to the successful execution of any strategy, other required behaviours are unique to a given strategy. Different strategies require different behaviours from leaders. Unfortunately, few executives and their teams take the time to consider the leadership implications of their strategic choices. But without behavioural alignment, implementation will falter and performance will suffer.