“We don’t need to work on strategy,” he stated. “Our strategy is innovative and sound. What we need is help on execution.”
“So you don’t execute well?” I asked.
“No we don’t. That’s our biggest problem.”
“Then how do you know you have a sound strategy?”
In my first post, I stated that strategy is paramount to the success of your organization. I had a few people question me on this, and would like to clarify and expand on this idea.
Strategy is primary to the success of your organization. And in primary I mean it should be done first and communicated well. A well articulated and communicated strategy is critical to the success of your organization, but you’re not going to get it 100% right the first time.
This highlights the importance of execution. The second role of leadership (after setting direction) is execution, and it may be your most critical duty as a leader. If you cannot execute effectively, how are you going to measure the effectiveness of your strategies? How do you know you have a good strategy if your execution is lacking? This image illustrates what I’m talking about.
The desired state is, of course, the upper right quadrant of the image. We have Good Strategy and Good Execution. We get a smiley face for this, and everyone is happy and productive. But where is the next best place to be? Good Execution and Bad Strategy is the second best alternative. Good Execution allows us to make modifications and improvements to our strategies (to go from A, to B, to C).
If you don’t execute effectively, how will you know if your strategies were any good or not?
We call the left side of the image (Bad Execution/Bad or Good Strategy) the Dark Side. And, as we all know, you need to stay away from the dark side.
So there you have it. Two of the three leadership roles. First is Setting Direction (Strategy). Second is Execution. You’ve got to do both to be an effective leader.
