Strategy and execution are two completely different things and skill sets, but they are interlinked.
The success of strategy management undoubtedly lies in “timely superior execution,” and it can only be achieved through clarified information, dynamic adjustment, continuous improvement and following up with key performance indicators clearly linked to the strategy persistently.
Information-based strategy management: Without reliable information, strategy is misleading. Without a good strategy, information is trivial. With today’s business velocity and frequent digital disruptions, constant changes and unprecedented uncertainty, execution is more difficult due to its complexity and culture of resistance. The challenge is to prioritize what you know about and keep an eye open for signs of things you don't know about. Real time quality information becomes invaluable to make proper adjustments to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Technically, the strategy-related information is varying, it could be utilitarian, extrinsic, intrinsic, social, practical epistemic etc.
The digital business is very complex, the leaders need to diagnose the core issues they have in their organizations, observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national, or global forces that define and influence the way they do business these days. Unclear or static strategy perhaps misleads the business in the wrong direction. If you plan in detail as far ahead as the end state, much planning time and effort will be wasted. With quality information, how to set the right priority depends on which of the business areas are most in need of improvement in the organization in question. Strategy management is a cross-functional effort and multidisciplinary and multidimensional planning.
Execute strategy in an agile way: It’s important to apply agile principles to make the linkage between strategy and execution and enhance resource engagement. Whether you have Agile teams or not, you still need to have agile management expertise and strong leadership discipline. Because it should be clearer to people how their work impacts the organization, to improve engagement, and increase productivity. The execution starts with a kick-off and workshops, top-down, different wildly important goals. Traditional management sometimes causes the ineffectiveness of strategy execution because of the weakness of inter-organizational control or weakness of adaptation of organizational task management.
In today's digital dynamic or unstable business circumstances, instead of out-of-date disjointed top-down management paradigms, digital management is more agile and flexible to encourage autonomy. Agility implies three “I”s: Incrementalism, iteration improvement. The wildly important goals are identified and prioritized. All strategy execution improvement work is done integrated with the daily operational work. It keeps the team highly motivated and accountable for the execution of the strategy. The individual that was not able to be successful before is now trained in “steps” needed for behavior change and contribute to strategic business goals. When strategic complexity can be “visualized” in a better way, individual contributors can see where they fit in the universe of work and it can bring a great sense of purpose to their work as well as their role in the strategy management.
Paradox is a sort of balance, presenting the very characteristics of strategy management: “simplexity, coopetition, creanalytics,” etc, prioritizing strategic goals, and enforcing strategy management effectiveness. The right attitude is: “Keep one eye on the operation, the other on the horizon.” Unless executed well, the greatest strategy will flop and without all dependencies and influences placed in the melting pot, risk-management of the greatest strategy will be a costly activity. The management needs to clarify both internal and external beliefs around how the business is a movement for the organizational strategy enablement and improvement, maintain and fix any imbalance in key business elements such as people, process, and technology, update structures, methodologies, and cultures, develop their best and next practices, and build a harmonized working environment to achieve strategic goals systematically.
Strategy and execution are two completely different things and skill sets, but they are interlinked. Successful strategy execution is directly related to leadership capability from the top down, as well as bottom –up collaboration. Culture as an invisible factor can either lift and sink a strategy. The drivers of culture are processes, structures, people capabilities, reward systems, etc, which are the same drivers of strategy execution. Leaders and managers should guide, direct, own the strategy they hold themselves accountable for, they should listen, communicate, and rally the team for the cause, enhance holistic management discipline to drive desired change and unlock performance.
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