Strategies fail because of one thing and one thing only, and that is execution. Your strategy may be flawless on paper but with lack of effective execution even the best of strategies will fail. Execution is without a doubt the single most hardest area for most leaders no matter what industry. And why won’t it be, execution is the one area where leaders have the least education. When it comes to business schools, the area of study is always strategy. Everyone teaches you how to make strategies that will put you on the peak of competition but what no one teaches you is how you execute that strategy and sustain it. Strategy is usually a few people gathered around a table brainstorming on a whiteboard to create ideas that will give them breakthrough results but execution is not that easy. Execution is working with multiple people and teams, getting them aligned to the same goal with the same enthusiasm and dedication and that is where execution becomes a battle. Execution is getting 4 critical disciplines tied to your strategy. These four disciplines are :
This is the first and most important discipline when it comes to accomplishing any goal. It is the discipline of narrow and streamlined focus. To give your dedication, time and energy towards knowing what matters most and focusing on that instead of diverted energy on multiple goals.
This is the area of leveraging. It is contradictory to what most leaders think. Today's economy has made us believe that with innumerable resources you can accomplish anything. But it’s the opposite that is true, you will accomplish more by focusing on the few key activities that drive your most important results.
This is all about engagement. You have the authority to make things happen, but you want more than that - you want the performance that only passion and engagement can produce. You being driven and committed to your strategy is not enough, you need the same level of commitment and engagement from the team if success is important.
No matter how brilliant your plan or how important your goal, nothing will happen until you follow through with consistent action. People always play differently when they are keeping score, nobody likes failing or even worse being the cause of a failure.
At FranklinCovey we are proud to be the global leaders in execution. We understood the need for focus and education on execution and devised the 4 disciplines of execution. We as an organization have gone to see phenomenal success in companies that have adopted the 4 disciplines of execution towards the achievement of their most critical goals.
To know how you could incorporate the execution module to never see a critical goal fail again come be a part of our globally renowned program The 4 disciplines of execution.