The Unnatural Divide Between Strategy & Execution

A lot of people talk about strategy:

• How important it is to business success
• How to do it / not to do it
• How strategic their plans are and how strategic they are
• How complicated strategy is
• What glamorous strategic frameworks they have developed

With the overuse of the word “Strategy”, the meaning has been diluted, like a song over-played on the radio; do we really know what this word means?

Brief Snapshot

While originating from the Greeks and initially used within military contexts, the term Strategy entered organisations after World War II and gained prominence within the corporate environment from the 1980’s. From that time to now, there has never been one universally agreed definition of Strategy and the term has transitioned through many semantic contexts.

Defining “Strategy”

A quick internet search will show countless definitions of the word “Strategy” that are similar but remain different with focuses on diverse elements.

If the definitions of strategy are so varied, is it any wonder that the word is subject to so much abuse in the world today?

“Most companies have strategies that are quixotic, muddled, and undifferentiated. This is hardly surprising, since in recent years the very idea of ‘strategy’ has been dumbed down by a deluge of naïve advice and simplistic frameworks”.

Gary Hamel, co-author of Competing for the Future

After reviewing many examples of this definition, and specifically in relation to business, here are some of the key elements that could be considered as central to a full definition:

• Consciously and purposefully created with a future focus
• A product and a process; a skill and an art
• A plan of action against an intended goal designed to improve an organisations position, defining actions and resourcing
• A guideline (or guidelines) to deal with a situation and for what actions to take (and what actions to not take)
• Directional in the long-term and flexible in short-term application of actions

We could cobble these elements together to create one long definition, but that would probably not be as useful as examining the elements that make strategy successful and how these are inter-related to other functions to ensure success.

Linked to Purpose / Mission

For Strategy to be effective in achieving the desired result, it must be linked to the overall purpose of the organisation, which presumes that the Purpose is relevant to the goal.

Goal focused

Strategy is the link between the purpose and the goal and defines the path to substantially higher performance. Good strategies focus on the insights into new sources of strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat to ensure that the business is ready to exploit strengths or address weaknesses for maximum impact.

What is important to remember is that “a strategy is the set of actions an organization or team should implement and, just as important, the actions an organization should avoid as they drive forward in their market” (Chuck Harrington, CEO of Parsons Corporation).

Strategy encompasses formulation and execution

Most critically, and often missing from contemporary corporate strategy development, is that setting and taking actions is a key element included in many definitions of strategy. Strategy then should define what we are focusing and how we plan to get there.

“The core content of a strategy is a diagnosis of the situation at hand, the creation or identification of a guiding policy for dealing with the critical difficulties, and a set of coherent actions.”

Richard Rumelt (Good Strategy/Bad Strategy)

In today’s business world, the creation of strategy has seen removed from the execution of this strategy, thereby creating what we believe is an unnatural divide between strategy formulation and execution that is driven solely by functional structures.

 How many times have you seen versions of this quote:

“A mediocre strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed”

How can a strategy be great if it is poorly executed and doesn’t deliver on the intended goal?

The universal acceptance of this quote serves to deepen the divide between strategy formulation and execution and allows leaders to place blame when their plans are unsuccessful.

Instead, we believe that looking at strategy as encompassing both formulation and implementation is more useful, such as the quote from Morris Chang:

“Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless.”

This is not a new concept, having been around with Kenneth Andrews in his 1971 book, The Concept of Corporate Strategy, but it seems to have become lost within the complicated and complex structures of the corporate and business world. Leaders have been focusing on setting purpose, vision and strategic direction, leaving execution as the purview of functional teams. This is an effective way to create focus with subject matter experts but presumes a separation between the two elements of strategy.

What does this mean?

While the subject of strategy has filled countless bookshelves, we believe in a few fundamental truths about strategy, these are:

1. Accurately identifying the core challenge is critical to a successful strategy
2. Identifying and collating patterns and links between seemingly disparate information will drive differentiation within strategy
3. Strategy should focus on advancing the organisations interests
4. Strategy is specific and meaningful
5. Ruthless prioritisation against the highest leverage actions that coherently drive results is fundamental to the success of strategy
6. Strategy comes alive through execution and execution must be measurable

How will you close the unnatural divide and use your advantage to create leverage for your outcomes?