Wayne Nelsen:
The discipline of execution has become known as the “missing link” to successful strategy.
It’s that critical additional step that goes beyond strategic thinking that many leaders believe is already inherent in what they do every day.
However, it’s not.
It is the tools, knowledge, and confidence needed to carry out your annual strategic initiatives successfully. Without it, leadership teams would almost have to craft the “perfect” strategy.
A plan where nothing goes wrong.
While execution will always be hard work, strategy benefits when a “frameworkâ is in place that aligns the actions of everyone on the team with the organization’s strategic objectives. A repeatable methodology that helps keep everyone on the team aligned with a common purpose and accountable to each other.
Execution management frameworks provide organizations with the organizational structure needed to manage people at an individual level. From this structure, feedback from active dialogue creates “actionable intelligence.” Any organization can use this intelligence (data and information) to help it make better decisions and focus on accomplishing organizational priorities.
The best frameworks have a strong cultural element that reinforces values and beliefs through “core behaviors.” Behaviors that can be monitored, tracked, and measured individually and ensure those efforts remain “top of mind” to every team member.
Execution Management Frameworks:
* Help leaders to do things they know they should have been doing for years but haven’t ever been comfortable doing,
* Serve entire teams by collaboratively outlining key initiatives at every level of the organization and then develop specific goals that will help to drive their achievement,
* Create consistent, two-way, candid dialogue within the organization that allows teams to be open and transparent with each other and always act with candor and humility,
* Surface and expose talent by identifying team members who can be counted upon to deliver results for the organization consistently,
* Act as a centralized repository of data and information that details individual and team actions/performance over each plan year, memorializing the information so it can be used for future strategy preparation.
Systems and processes are absolutely necessary if you’re looking for business productivity that “sticks” with your people. Without the discipline of a repeatable strategy execution methodology, all you truly have is a set of disparate tools and programs that may solve a problem or two but don’t unite your entire team under a set of common strategic objectives.
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