Discover a simple step-by-step guide to help you effortlessly implement your performance strategy.
Behind every successful business or organization is a reliance on strategic initiatives. From executing a marketing plan to implementing new management software to boost efficiency, a successful strategy can help a business reach its desired goals.
But what is strategy implementation? Otherwise known as strategy planning execution, it’s turning plans into actions to reach a desired business goal.
So, how do you ensure it will succeed in corporate strategy? Here, we cover a three-step strategy implementation process. After all, without successful strategy implementation, even the greatest ideas will not come to fruition.
The key steps to strategy implementation
So, you have a business goal that you need to achieve and a strategy mapped out to get there.
But while developing a strategy is essential to creating change within your organization, the implementation itself is vital to ensuring business growth and success.
The implementation process focuses on the execution of your well-planned strategy by diving into how targets can be met and addressing the three Ws - "when", "who", and "where".
Here are the three key steps to successful strategy implementation:
1. Strategy creation
In simple terms, strategy creation, also known as strategy planning, is the analytical process of selecting the most suitable action to meet your organization’s goals.
It allows your business or organization to examine and review its resources and environment to create a plan of action. In doing so, your management team can identify your organization’s strengths and weaknesses to compete better against competitors and increase profitability.
Strategy creation can help your business plan for success and make any necessary improvements to strategies when the time comes. It’s, therefore, essential for achieving and measuring goals.
Once created, you must make your employees aware of the organization’s objectives and goals so you can all work together to achieve them.
2. Strategy deployment
Your strategy sounds great, and your team is working hard, but you do not see the results you expected.
You might be missing the gap between strategy and execution - strategy deployment.
This essentially translates your strategy into an execution plan and is an important and often overlooked segment of strategy implementation.
What is strategy deployment?
Strategy deployment is a management process that aligns a business or organization’s functions and activities with its strategic goals.
The idea originates from the Japanese term “Hoshin Kanri” - ‘hoshin’ meaning ‘direction’ or ‘compass needle’ and ‘kanri’ translating to ‘control’ or ‘administration’. The idea implies ‘direction management’ - setting direction and steering towards it.
The framework defines the current state, the future state, the changes to be implemented, and the path is taken to achieve the goal.
The framework aims to steer an organization toward its strategic, long-term objectives and goals while also maintaining and improving existing business processes through organizational alignment and good systemic planning.
Hoshin Kanri was initially developed by Professor Yoji Akao in post-war Japan but has since spread to the U.S. and worldwide, helping employees align long-term goals and decisions in the same direction.
Strategy deployment involves creating a high-level plan for organizational improvement and using the strategy for a specific purpose, usually to achieve one or more goals.
Communicating the goals and strategy across your whole organization is essential for everyone to collaborate.
This should grant autonomy for individual teams and departments while maintaining alignment across the whole organization of the business’ strategy and goals.
3. Strategy execution
You’ve set your goals and deployed your strategy — the third step to ensure successful strategy implementation is execution.
After all, even the most well-planned strategies can fail without them. 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution.
39% of leaders say one of the main reasons strategic initiatives succeed is skilled implementation, so you must execute your strategy correctly.
What is strategy execution?
Strategy execution is essentially implementing a strategic plan to reach organizational goals. It includes the daily structures, systems, and operational purposes to help your team be successful and fulfill its aims.
Here are the steps for successful strategy execution:
- Commit to a plan
Before you dive straight into execution, it’s important that all key stakeholders devise a plan that everyone sticks to. This ensures that everyone is aligned on the same goals.
- Communicate clearly
Clear and strong communication can help ensure the success of your strategy execution. Plan how you will facilitate team communication, such as regular team meetings, and choose a channel for daily communication, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Identify goals
You’ll need to identify your goals and what you want to achieve to execute your strategy successfully. Once you know these goals, managers can develop the steps needed to reach them. For example, the strategy may involve updating technology systems to improve efficiency and training employees on how to use these new systems.
- Monitor performance
It’s important to monitor progress when it comes to strategy execution continually. To measure your organization’s performance, you’ll need to determine numeric key performance indicators (KPIs) during the planning stage to determine whether you’re hitting your targets. From there, you can assess if any alterations to the strategy are needed based on your progress. - Evaluate strategy
The final stage of strategy execution is to evaluate the strategy. Is it working? Is there something that could be improved? Use your performance metrics to determine your strategy's effectiveness and where you can make changes. You can also ask for feedback from the team to gain insight into goals, processes, and task completion.
Learn more about the keys to strategy execution with our eBook:
How i-nexus can help you implement your business strategy
If you’re looking for a tool to help you implement your business’ strategy successfully, i-nexus is the answer.
Our strategy execution software can help to streamline your processes and connect the dots between plans, processes, and teams.
That way, you have less to juggle so you can focus on the important stuff - executing, planning and tracking your goals. See how the i-nexus software can help you manage your strategy execution management and book a demo today.
Learn more about strategy execution
Take the next steps in your journey by exploring our strategy execution resource hub or any of the below:
- Key to strategy execution eBook: Read how companies like Danaher and HP have mastered strategy execution and what you can learn from them.
- What does it mean to be Business Agile?: Leap into the future of strategic planning and execution with this fascinating insight.
- How AI and Machine-Assisted Learning will help strategy execution: As Artificial Intelligence becomes a mainstay in our lives, read how AI and machine-assisted learning will evolve to support your strategy execution.
About the author
James Milsom is Head of Marketing at i-nexus.
As Head of Marketing, his drive is to raise awareness and understanding of enterprises' challenges in delivering strategic goals amidst changing markets and the obstacles traditional tools and methods present leaders.
If you’d like to talk more about strategy, reach out to James on james.milsom@i-nexus.com or connect with him on LinkedIn for the latest insights.
