The Strategy Execution Playbook: Accelerating Time to Value

This guide shows how you can improve strategy execution and move faster toward achieving your business goals.

Strategy execution is proactively implementing a strategic plan that delivers results.

The word “proactively” is important here, because being proactive empowers your enterprise to swiftly change plans, priorities, and resources without drifting away from your strategy.

That way, you can ultimately achieve the organization’s strategic objectives and goals.

You may also see strategy execution referred to as strategy implementation.

Regardless of what you call it, effective strategy execution isn’t something you build in a day. You must cultivate it over time, but the efforts are worth it.

Benefits of good strategy execution

Good strategy execution bridges the gap between strategic planning and achieving those strategic goals. When done successfully, it can have a significant, positive impact on your organization’s competitive position and bottom line.

Let’s look at some benefits your organization can achieve through strategy execution.

• Enterprise-wide alignment: Every employee understands and maintains alignment with strategic goals, and objectives and can link these down to the department, team, and individual levels
• Enhanced decision-making: Business units, departments, and teams across the enterprise have the necessary context and are aligned objectives to make informed decisions around prioritization, trade-offs, investing, and allocating resources to further strategy
• Employee engagement: Employees know how their day-to-day work supports the company’s strategy, which can increase satisfaction, performance, and motivation
• Faster time to value: The business focuses on the objectives that matter, reducing the time it takes to achieve benefits from their efforts
• Long-term sustainability: The company is poised for success in both the short and long terms by investing time, money, and resources into strategic initiatives

Every company strives for these benefits, but creating the link between strategy and execution can be a serious challenge for many organizations.

According to research conducted by Economist Impact, commissioned by Planview, 86% of executives believe their organization needs to improve accountability with regard to strategy implementation.

The void between strategy and execution is very real, and failure to communicate business strategy is a common problem.

According to Gartner, “61 percent of corporate strategists say poor strategy execution is the main reason that new growth initiatives fail.”

There are a few reasons why organizations fail.

One issue is leadership teams that constrain execution from the start. Having crafted a solid strategy, some executives neglect to provide adequate resources. Others take a hands-off approach, expecting strategy to be implemented without their guidance or involvement.

Failure to adequately communicate strategy is also a common problem. As a result, departments and teams may have different interpretations of the strategy, leading to discordant goals and objectives. The risk is wasting time and money on initiatives that do not support the corporate strategy – or, in some instances, supporting initiatives that undermine your strategy.

Employees who don’t see a connection between their work and the strategy may not take ownership of the strategic objectives.

Rigidity in organizations contributes to unsuccessful initiatives, as well. Inflexibility makes it difficult to adapt strategies and plans, causing delays and missed opportunities.

Finally, there are silos.

Silos prevent departments and teams from meaningful collaboration around strategic work. Information becomes fragmented, inefficiencies arise, and departmental goals take precedence over enterprise strategy. As a result, strategic alignment withers on the vine.

How can companies avoid these failures?

Read our eBook titled “Shift vs. Drift” to learn more about the consequences of ineffective strategic implementation and how to avoid strategic drift.

Translating your strategic vision into business outcomes requires a structured approach. A comprehensive strategy execution management approach should include the four essential components below. They will help you create a strong foundation for strategy execution.

1. Strategic clarity and communication

Communication is an essential element of strategy implementation.

Business leaders should communicate a clear, easy-to-comprehend vision, mission, and strategy that is consistently passed down to departments and teams.

When everyone is on the same page, with the same purpose, camaraderie increases.

2. Aligning teams, work, and strategy

All goals, objectives, and metrics should direct efforts toward the strategic purpose. Use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and other goal-setting frameworks to assist in this process.

Learn more: Read our eBook on Strategic OKRs.

3. Resource allocation and management

Resource management directly impacts execution success by ensuring the right resources are allocated to priority initiatives that advance strategic outcomes.

There will always be times when plans change. Effective strategy execution requires the ability to quickly reallocate resources while maintaining a strategic focus.

This is where a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) solution can help by providing the visibility and agility needed to optimize resource utilization across the enterprise, even as plans and priorities change due to internal and external factors.

An effective SPM solution makes it easy to connect strategy to delivery through data-driven decisions about where to allocate your constrained resources for maximum impact.

4. Performance measurement and monitoring

Successful strategy execution requires you to monitor progress and measure results accurately.

Your enterprise needs accurate, timely data, to identify and address any potential issues that undermine the work being done across the organization.

Reports and dashboards that show real-time performance metrics help business leaders make data-driven decisions around strategy execution.

Performance measurement also holds employees accountable for their work and can help motivate teams as they see how their work helps the enterprise achieve its strategic goals.

Even well-defined strategies paired with strategy execution management software can encounter obstacles during implementation. But understanding these challenges is the first step to overcoming them.

Below are several common challenges that undermine strategy execution:

Lack of ownership and accountability

For strategy execution to work, you must rally the organization around a common vision. Use clear goals and roadmaps that reinforce the strategy, and use OKRs to monitor progress and keep execution on track and aligned with strategic outcomes.

Poor communication of strategy

Business leaders must be aligned on the strategy and communicate it throughout the organization, down to the team levels.

Employees are not mind readers. Strategy communication should be a priority. Messaging should be simple, transparent, and communicated regularly.

Without consensus and clear execution plans, teams and departments may revert to siloed work and goals.

Inability to adapt strategy

During times of disruption, economic uncertainty, and market volatility, static approaches to strategy execution are largely ineffective.

Many organizations want to become more agile but remain constrained by rigid budgets and annual planning cycles.

Continuous planning and flexible funding are fundamental to the strategic execution process. Access to accurate, real-time data means your enterprise can proactively identify opportunities, respond to market changes, and make faster pivots as conditions evolve.

Poor collaboration

Business silos can be tough to break down. Disparate data may be spread far and wide, in different systems, with no easy method to collect, analyze, and distribute it.

SPM software provides a means to bring the business together with shared objectives, standardized data and processes, and reports and dashboards that everyone can access in one system. Confidence in the strategy and the data is a powerful antecedent to collaborating well and delivering outstanding strategy execution.

Failure to pivot when unsuccessful

Companies waste a lot of time and money working on projects that don’t support strategy. Sometimes, this is because there’s no organizational culture supporting course corrections, misalignment due to limited visibility, poor data quality, or all of the above.

You can address this by adopting a data-driven approach that informs decision-making around planning, prioritizing, re-prioritizing, and investing in work based on its strategic value.

Good strategy execution may require implementing many cultural, operational, and technological changes. The following tools and techniques should all feed into a central strategy execution system to drive the right initiatives, build agility, and accelerate strategy delivery.

Goal setting and cascading objectives

Effective strategy implementation requires a structured planning process where teams translate strategy into measurable goals, objectives, and actionable steps.

Your goals should be SMART:

• Specific: Should focus on what exactly will be done and relate directly to the work and responsibilities of the individual or team
• Measurable:: Progress towards the goal should be easy to measure
• Attainable:: Must be realistically possible to achieve their goals
• Relevant:: Should be directly connected to strategy and business performance
• Time-bound:: The goal should be accomplished within a given time frame

OKRs are a great framework for aligning goals to strategic outcomes, cascading from high-level strategic objectives down to team and individual contributions.

You can set strategic OKRs that define what success looks like for the entire organization, while department and team OKRs connect daily work to the strategic outcomes.

This approach drives alignment across the business, ensuring everyone understands how their efforts contribute to organizational goals.

Measuring strategy execution success

Strategy remains wishful thinking until your company develops a concrete way to measure progress. Key performance indicators and goal-setting systems such as OKRs are necessary to define goals, track objectives, and achieve results.

Once investments are approved, organizations should identify which metrics to track. Effective metrics include leading indicators (predicting future performance) and lagging indicators (showing past performance).

Leading indicators may include:

• Completion rate of OKRs
• Time-to-decision on strategic adjustments
• Resource allocation alignment to strategic initiatives

Examples of lagging indicators include:

• Revenue growth from strategic initiatives
• Strategic project completion rates
• Cost savings achieved

Your enterprise can also use leading and lagging indicators to identify trends and plan long-term strategy.

Building a culture that supports strategy execution

A culture that supports execution provides a compelling vision and strategy, fostering a focus on work that matters to the business. Openness and transparency encourage employees to work together to produce results, rather than waste time on politics or personalities.

Performance-based culture recognizes and rewards teamwork, agility, and ambition, not just the results. Too much focus on the hard numbers may stifle creativity, adaptability, and risk-taking. Afraid to miss their numbers, managers may make performance estimates that are too conservative.

Strategy-execution culture also supports a level of accountability. Employees should be encouraged to have honest conversations about whether the work delivers value.

Organizations should also adapt to the way teams want to work. This entails supporting the ways of work that teams use. Teams work faster and better when they’re equipped with the tools and processes to do their best work.

Strategic portfolio management software ensures relevant data from work management tools is captured and uploaded to a centralized system. There, portfolio leaders can track initiatives, investments, and whether they’re aligned to strategy.

Cultivating better strategy execution provides companies with one of the greatest opportunities for gaining a competitive advantage. The implementation requires changes in people, processes, and technology across the business. Because of this, strong leadership is critical at every stage, from formulating the strategy to analyzing the results.

Every organization is different, and strategy execution must be implemented based on your unique needs and challenges. The good news is that this is not a one-time project, but a continuous journey. Take the first steps to improve strategy execution by identifying current gaps, improving strategy communication, and building cross-functional alignment.

Watch our on-demand Strategic Portfolio Management demo to see how an SPM solution can help you bridge the gap between your strategic vision and real-world results.