9 ways to improve strategic effectiveness

1Seek agreement on objectives and ensure they are clearly defined

Creating clarity, understanding and - more importantly - agreement about the objectives and their associated performance measures is key to ensuring everyone is aligned on the outcome sought. If the leadership team, non-executive team, shareholders and investors don't agree on where the ship is sailing, the journey becomes much more difficult once you start executing.

2Keep things simple

It is very easy to create many complex, multi-layer objectives. In our experience, the more objectives there are, the harder it is to focus, get agreement, and then prioritise what really matters. Keeping between 4–8 main objectives where possible helps to ensure clarity, purpose, and agreement across the leadership team - which is critical before focusing on the all-important execution phase.

3Ensure objectives are balanced

While it can be easy or enticing to focus primarily on go-to-market and revenue objectives, many of the most effective organisations have a balanced set of objectives covering all aspects of the organisation. Balanced scorecard areas include a financial perspective, internal business perspective (including operations), customer perspective, and learning and growth perspectives.

4Take time to formally plan the execution

When preparing to execute a strategy, it helps to formally plan out the execution stage. For organisations that are used to executing, it can be very tempting to leap straight into justifying existing initiatives and programmes. We have seen effective outcomes when the time is taken to properly consider the business capabilities required in future, assumptions, key milestones, review points, and "what if" scenario modelling. Execution is the hardest stage of strategy delivery, so it warrants careful planning and discussion.

5Consider strategic options carefully and collaboratively

An area that adds significant value is the stage of mapping out and agreeing strategic options once objectives have been achieved. The purpose of this stage is to identify the range of different ways an objective can be achieved, and which areas of the organisation need to be involved.

By taking the time to really brainstorm, the ability to create real innovation or a radically different way of achieving the same outcome can be found. Some organisations leap into the first execution path that seems obvious, without considering alternative paths that could yield the outcomes in a much less risky or more cost-effective way.

6Plan risks and assumptions with your chosen strategic option

How much is known about the strategy execution plan? Are there wild assumptions being made about the state of the market, customers, or the proposition? If the way forward is not known very well, treat it like driving along a motorway in fog - take it much more slowly and increase the evaluation cycles.

What if the way forward is not what you expected? How quickly can you pursue an alternative path? Another common mistake is to plough on regardless when the information points to problems ahead. Sometimes continuing is the right thing to do, but do it consciously with all the information at hand.

7Create alignment and buy-in

It is unlikely that every strategy you execute will go perfectly according to plan without a hitch. In these situations, in order to maintain strategic effectiveness, it is important to be flexible and adapt to any problems and challenges which arise along the way. Having a contingency plan is smart and you should make sure you're aware of what you will need to do in situations that cause issues in your execution.

8Be agile and prepared to accept change

Once a small set of candidate options have been created, plan how to get all stakeholders aligned and bought into the strategy and its execution plan. All too often strategies fail due to lack of organisational input, confusion between departments, or failure to coordinate with other aspects of your business.

In our experience, successful organisations link their strategy execution to all aspects of their business - including finance, human resources, and operations - to ensure they have the capacity to execute. It is also important to ensure that team remuneration and rewards are linked to the strategy and its successful delivery, so that hearts, minds, and wallets are all focused on successful outcomes.

9Use strategy execution software

Strategy execution software provides a game-changing capability to link complex execution plans to business objectives and outcomes, and manage all aspects of execution. It helps take the complexity and risk out of delivering cross-organisational change and ensures that all the work delivers against business outcomes.

StrategyWorks was created based on years of experience helping clients build winning strategic execution plans. It can help your business to execute its strategies effectively, while allowing you to see your strategy's performance against KPIs and OKRs.