DIGITAL STRATEGY EXECUTION FAILS FOR MOST BUSINESSES, BIG OR SMALL, BUT WHY?!

 

Strategies go to die at the very point when and where they needed to come to life, or in other words, work towards desired goals and objectives. But why is it that after all that energy and resources put into that planning process everything seems to go on a downward spiral all the time, or at least most times?

Well, I can’t give you all the answers for sure, but one thing am sure about is that if we continue to take the points am about to share for granted, then you are bound to continue mediocre results that might stem out of your strategy meetings.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a digital strategy for you your business, it could be any sort of business strategy related to your various lines of business. If you continue to ignore the key factors below, then on your dashboards you will reap what you sow.

·         A serious lack of commitment beyond the planning stage

Most strategies are left to luck to take control of their destinies, and they exactly get where you set them out to get to.

Commitment or the lack of it thereof is probably one of the key reasons most strategies remain in the boardrooms. That is probably because most people think that the strategy meeting is the start and end of the planning and execution cycle.

Not committing to the strategy after planning is equivalent to not planning at all. So why did you even plan for what you are incapable of doing in the fast place? Commitment means tying the objectives underpinned in the strategy to particular owners who are qualified to take the strategy forward rather than merry-go-round with it in a vicious cycle.

 

·         Resources committed to the strategy execution are insufficient

Without fuel, you might just as well have to push your car to where you want it to get to. But for how long can you push a car, especially uphill, and how many people are willing to push it with you anyway? They will probably tell you to call the towing truck after a few meters.

 

You could have the best of strategies ever put on paper, but if you don’t have the time, the money, and the impetus to get it executed according to plan then your plan should already be considered a failed one from the start.

 

Do you have the resources to hire an expert or consultant to get the job done, for instance, a programmer to code a process change that will probably save your business from losing cash or to get into a new market? These resources if ignored could turn into your business being ignored by potential clients. And we all know what happens to a business without clients.

 

·         Poorly designed strategy

 

The strategy needs to make sense within the context within which it is being applied, and I must say it is important to continuously review your strategy. A good strategy design should speak to all stakeholders in the same language. All queries must be answered before proceeding to execution and beyond.

The quarterly strategy must be closely aligned with the departmental strategy through monthly meetings, the monthly meetings aligned to the team’s weekly meetings, and finally, the weekly being tied to the individual objectives of the team members.

 If your strategy doesn’t make sense to the organization then you probably designed it wrong and need to go back to the basics and figure out what makes a good strategy design.

For a digital strategy to work the director, managers, media buyers, graphics, coders and Execs have to align in order to ‘move a mountain’. A good design in most cases makes the execution seem easy to take on than a bad one.

 

·         Failure to link strategy and operations

In most cases, we fail to make a link between our digital strategy and its operation of it henceforth. Operations cannot be a standalone entity from the strategy, otherwise, you end up with a map without directions to get to your destination.

From the very beginning, there has to be harmony between the planning and execution of a strategy for effective results.

Failure to get this connection is a clear sign of a poor strategy design and must be sorted out way before we even talk about the execution of wrongly aligned ideas and solutions to prevailing issues within the organization.

 

·         Lack of project management skills

Project management is not a matter of luck but it takes some specialized skills to get things done properly. This is in line with the resources required as well as knowing the flow or chronology of the execution side of the strategy.

Things like critical paths and milestones must be clearly understood in order for the organization not to make a fool of itself as they go around with business.

You must have someone who is qualified or experienced to handle such matters, and this cannot be just a ‘by the way’ inclusion into your strategy team, this person must be there from the start to finish.

 

Imagine having someone who doesn’t understand the structure of a viable sales funnel that returns value for your marketing investment, for instance, that is a wrong person to have as your project lead or a key decision-maker in your quest for value returns.

 

·         Ad hoc or unplanned management approach

Strategy is something that is hard to grasp at first, and this applies across organizations from the board to the workers doing the daily operations.

It is almost a must that strategy planning starts from the top management trickling down towards lower management, however, it is not uncommon that you have the lower management having a better understanding of the business than their superiors.

This leads to a misaligned organization, with top management due to ignorance or other factors acting as the ‘deflators’ in the quest to get things done. Planning is timewasting to such leaders and yet they don’t realize that ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’.

·         Unclear reporting and sharing practices

What is a strategy without the ability to track progress? If we don’t set up clear parameters with which to track progress for the plans that we have then again, we have made a grave mistake in our effort to execute a good plan.

Objectives and key results should be measurable such that we can clearly see the direction our digital strategy is taking. Key performance indicators and dashboards to communicate this to the right stakeholders must be in place before we start rolling out the strategy, otherwise, we are moving without a compass.

It is one thing to have a great digital strategy in place, but if this strategy cannot be executed well then it is definitely due to some or all the above reasons and probably more that we might have left out.

Are you finding it hard to pass on your strategy and its scope to your valuable organization, are you experiencing the bottlenecks I just shared in your strategy execution process?

If yes, then please feel free to get in touch with me on this matter and any other business consulting issues that you might need help with.

bladuneet@gmail.com

+256 712 333 988 - WhatsApp