My five year old daughter loves puzzles. There’s nothing more satisfying to her than sorting through all those pieces, looking for the corners, straight edges, and visual clues that fit together to create a masterpiece. But, occasionally, approaching the end of the puzzle gives rise to an incredible frustration: A piece of the puzzle is missing! First comes anger, then blame, and inevitability a few tears – all that effort, for little reward! Disappointed, we pack the puzzle away, fully intending to find that missing piece… only to pull that same puzzle out a few months later and repeat the same torturous process all over again.

Strategy brings together the pieces of the corporate puzzle that we need to achieve a picture-perfect vision for an aspect of business. However, 90 percent of businesses fail to reach their strategic goals, which researchers believe is due to a gap between strategic planning and execution.

There are many reasons why strategy fails to deliver the expected results. However, if your strategy overlooks pivotal elements during the planning process, it could be implemented perfectly and you’ll likely still end up disappointed with the result.

As a senior consultant in corporate public affairs, I’ve reviewed countless strategy documents over the last decade. Many of the strategies I see are good, but even the great strategies tend to have a gap or two. Avoid the six most common strategy traps that I see by reflecting on these questions and taking corrective action when you’re preparing or updating strategy.

Trap 1 – Poor strategic alignment

When times are tough, everyone feels better with a strategy in place. But unfortunately for you, this probably means your strategy is one of a gazillion in your company. Finite resources are pulled in many different directions, and if you don’t clearly demonstrate how your strategy helps achieve your company’s vision and how its uniqueness complements other strategies, plans and priorities then it risks being overlooked.

Evidence of strategic alignment, that ‘golden thread’ that links this strategy up with the rest of the company, is often a missing piece of the puzzle. Without it, your strategy risks being seen as a remote island of the company continent.

Ask yourself:

• Is it clear how this strategy fits into the bigger picture of what the company is aiming to achieve?
• What other strategies, policies, plans, or documents already exist in the company, do they relate to this strategy, and how does it all fit together?

Avoid the trap:

• Map out how your strategy supports your company’s vision, mission, purpose and values, and how it correlates with other key strategic documents.
• Bonus points if you can draw a thread from your strategy to industry-leading frameworks or approaches too.

Trap 2 – Don’t assume, know the facts

“If you are searching for keys and you assume that the keychain is green, your mind will ignore everything except green.” – Shunya.

At the best, assumptions hold us back from realising the true power of strategy. At worst, they can make a complete fool out of us. It’s easy to assume; it takes courage to question and unearth truths. Actively critique your strategy for knowledge gaps, universally accepted truths and biases within yourself, others and your organisation. I’ve seen assumptions worm their way into every nook and cranny of strategies, so review your entire body of work and fact-check the stories you tell yourself about your operating environment, your company, and your stakeholders.

Ask yourself:

• Do I know that for a fact, or am I assuming it?
• Have I actively sought out assumptions and inherent biases throughout the planning process, and challenged these?
• Could I comfortably defend that claim within my company or in an interview with my favourite hard-hitting investigative journalist?

Avoid the trap:

• Identify all your assumptions and then test them. Make sure you can back up your assertions with data and evidence.
• Where assumptions are unavoidable, list them out explicitly and actively review their validity during strategy implementation.
• Value diversity and inclusion in your planning processes to help individuals avoid their own “blind spots”.

Trap 3 – Stuck in silos and echo-chambers

You wouldn’t expect that one person alone could implement your strategy successfully, so don’t try to prepare your strategy in isolation from others. A common area strategies fall down is in the inclusion of the right people in strategy development.

Great strategies challenge the status-quo, with blue-sky, out-of-the-box thinking.

If you’re finding everyone you consult with tends to have similar opinions and generally supportive views about your strategy, you might actually have a problem. You could be developing your strategy inside the vacuum of a silo or eco-chamber. Transformative strategy cannot come from hearing the same-old thoughts and insights from similar people from within your team, your department, or sometimes even within your company.

Research in the Harvard Business Review shows that 71 percent of employees in companies with weak execution believe strategic decisions are second-guessed, as opposed to 45 percent of employees from companies with strong execution. If your strategy has not had a healthy dose of criticism, scepticism, and challenge – start by taking look at your stakeholder governance. Stakeholder engagement can be your strategy’s secret ingredient for success, or its downfall.

Think carefully about all the people that your strategy might impact and those who could impact your strategy’s success – these are your stakeholders. Have you sought them out, listened to their views, and made adjustments to your strategy as a result?

Involving your stakeholders helps them buy-in to your strategy, which is integral to its overall success. Stakeholders engaged in the strategy development process are more likely to understand what is trying to be achieved and why, accept the outcomes and their roles, and take action.

That same research showed that clarifying decision rights and making sure that information flows where it needs to go are the most influential factors in the successful strategy execution, so stack the cards in your favour by building stakeholder understanding and support early on.

Ask yourself:

• Whose hearts and minds am I trying to win through this strategy? Have their voices been heard in its preparation?
• Who has a role to play in implementing this strategy, and have they had a seat at the table to participate in its development?
• Has the strategy been challenged, and the writing process been challenging? It should be!

Avoid the trap:

• Understand who your key stakeholders are, and offer them a seat at the strategy development table. Aim to harness diverse viewpoints to create robust strategy.
• Have a rigorous, agreed plan to bring stakeholders on the journey with you, including adequate time for authentic collaboration and meaningful contribution.

Trap 4 – Can you evaluate that?

“If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” – H. James Harrington.

For all this talk of strategy success, a common area I see strategies fall down is in the quality of their measurement approach. After all, if you’re not making evidence-based decisions during strategy execution, the odds of succeeding are really not in your favour.

There are a few key things that I personally look for.

To start, it must be very clear about what success looks and feels like in your strategy objectives and key performance indicators. You must be able to measure each of these easily and regularly, and by using more than data source. Plan to gather both quantitative and qualitative data as evidence of the outcomes being achieved, seek a balance of financial and non-financial measures, and consider how you can communicate this in a simple report.

Evaluation is not a task to be left till the end of your strategy term, or even a year down the track. Yes, it’s important to formally and periodically review your strategy collaboratively with your stakeholders. But it’s equally important in today’s dynamic and rapidly evolving business environment to be focused on continuous improvement. To do this you’ll need regularly updated data and evidence to inform frequent discussions on how the strategy execution is going, lessons learned, and tweaks to be made.

If this is not your usual approach to measurement and evaluation, it can feel like a lot. I get it. My hot tip is to KISS – Keep it Simple, Stupid. You might, for example, decide to keep a narrow focus and limit your strategy to a set of three highly impactful objectives. You could look for opportunities to piggy-back off existing processes for data collection or research by using or modifying these to meet your measurement requirements.

Ask yourself:

• How can I easily measure that?
• How could I validate or confirm that data set?
• What evidence would I need to present to convince the sceptics that this strategy is working, and how would I do that?
• Do I have the resources to pull off my measurement and evaluation approaches?

Avoid the trap:

• Start from a place of success. Really visualise what success looks and feels like, and use a reputable framework to define your objectives, KPIs and success measures.
• Look for a simple path to measurement integrity, and be clear about the processes and actions required to monitor, evaluate and continually improve your strategy.
• Deeply understand your current state of play and how the company is performing right now. Prepare a baseline and use this intelligence to inform all areas of your strategy during the development phase. If a measure of success is too difficult to baseline, change it to something that’s going be more practical and meaningful.
• Design a simple scorecard template that can be easily updated and is supported by your stakeholders as a measure of how successfully your strategy is being implemented as well as the results being achieved.

Trap 5 – The devil is in the detail

Should your action plan sit within the strategy, as a separate document, or within a suite of documents, tools and templates? The level of detail you should include in a strategy is hotly debated.

Personally, I don’t mind where your detailed action plan sits – but I do want you to have it. Because if you are not clear about exactly what needs to be done to achieve the strategy, down to the smallest of details, you’re going to get stuck.

Ask yourself:

• What exactly needs to be done, when and by who?
• How much will this cost?
• Will I be able to deliver this based on the resources available to me?
• Am I focused on the areas that matter most, and that will have the most impact?
• What might go wrong, and how might we deal with that?
• When issues arise, how would they be escalated and what process would we follow to manage and resolve them?
• How will we monitor and track our progress?

Avoid the trap:

• As a minimum within your strategy, map out your strategy priorities, delivery phases, and broad time horizons. Lean on these when building out your actions.
• Have a detailed action plan for at least the first work phase (and keep it looking 3-6 months), and have a real-time tool to manage and track delivery. The level of granularity should be detailed enough that your strategy implementation can be managed like a project by a single person, but not so detailed that you are disempowering those who are responsible for the tasks.
• Ensure your action plan is flexible and achievable by involving those who will be responsible for taking action in the creation of plan. Understand the inter-dependencies of tasks, lead times required, and how you can pivot if needed.

Trap 6 – To read is to understand… or not

You and your team have poured blood, sweat and tears into your strategy. It is a foolproof plan that’s going to get your company to where it needs to go. If only people would just read it, right?

I’m sorry to say, most people will never read your incredible strategy document in its entirety… or perhaps even at all. And this is totally ok. Because not all parts of it are relevant to all of the people who you need to sit up, pay attention, and take action to help you reach nirvana.

With the complex work of strategy writing done and no doubt a lengthy document sitting in a computer folder, you now need a version of your strategy document that is short, sharp, concise and easily consumed by all. As a minimum, distil strategy documents down to a simple one page summary, a roadmap, and some killer visuals.

Turns out, 95 percent of employees don’t understand or are unaware of their company’s strategy. The onus is on you to at least take the initial steps required for good communication by translating your strategy into simple formats and messages that are easy to digest and share. Don’t underestimate the power of creating early a simple base upon which to build the communication needed for strategy execution.

Ask yourself:

• What are the fundamental, core concepts of your strategy? What does it boil down to?
• What is it that I need people to know, think or do?
• How can I make this content easy for people to understand, and hold their attention? What different formats and mediums would be best for my key audiences?
• If I put myself in their shoes, what would I… [think/say/question/do]?

Avoid the trap:

• Start with an expectation that people will not read your full strategy document. Instead, lead with a succinct, easy-to-digest, highly visual summary that gets the key messages and core content across.
• Create a strategy communication plan before you leap into execution, and focus on ensuring the right people receive the right information in the right way at the right time.

 

The odds are against you in strategy execution – so set yourself up for success in the strategy planning phase. What tweaks can you make in your planning process to generate the biggest ripples in your strategy performance?