Documenting and executing your strategy

. Continued from Wednesday

 

A suggested tip to avoid this pitfall is to have structured meetings to review deliverables. Such review meetings should not exceed fortnightly cycle, in order not to lose steam and focus.

Another tip is to convince employees that although client meetings, conference calls, business dinners, etc are important, these activities cannot occur if the organization did not exist, hence, they should execute their deliverables promptly.

A third tip is to create an incentive around execution. It may include recognition at meetings, issuance of letter of commendation, attribution in internal publications or intranet.

Ninth; organizations should entrench their strategy in the minds of their employees. This is not advocated as a way of ‘showing off’ or being ‘trendy’, but in a very objective consideration for goal congruence.

On the issue of entrenching strategy, cases abound where amongst senior management, a simple enquiry about the strategy, strategic objectives, or strategic thrust of the organization elicited as many diverse responses as are the number of respondents! How such organizations seek to execute their strategy may likely remain a mirage.

The tenth; and arguably the most important challenge in strategy/strategic planning, is execution! A clear oxymoron!

Experience has shown that organizations write beautiful strategic plans, with colourful phrases, highfalutin words, couched in attractive power-point slides; but the plans are either not executed or executed very poorly.

Strategy, as easy as it is to pronounce and flaunt, is a difficult area of organizational management. Often times, enthusiasm and commitment levels from Management and employees rise and wane intermittently. Hence, strategic planning should be put at the core of the organization’s business, management of people and other resources, corporate governance, and the organization’s fidelity to stakeholders, including government, regulators, customers, suppliers, host community, and the general public.

Unlike the “once-upon-a-time” fate that befell themes such as ‘Total Quality Management (TQM), ‘lean manufacturing’, ‘Six Sigma’, ‘personnel management’, in Nigeria; any forward-looking organization should never trivialize strategy and strategic planning, in terms of organization-wide commitment and shared sense of urgency and execution. To do otherwise could engender sheer waste of scarce resources of time, energy, and funding.

 

 Tajudeen Ahmed

Tajudeen Ahmed, a strategy expert, with years of senior management experience in consulting, commercial banking, and FMCG, is the General Manager/Group Head Business Development at BUA Group.