Through years of experience in international HR practice across different industries, Talent Asia has observed that business failures rarely hinge on one factor alone. Nevertheless, nine in ten companies experiencing business failure attribute the main cause to failures in strategy execution. Achieving executional excellence is one of the major challenges facing CEOs.
Strategy is over-invested; execution is under-examined
Companies spend billions gathering executives, consultants and innovators to devise strategies, but insufficient focus is placed on translating those plans into practice. When examining failure, executives tend to emphasise re-strategising rather than scrutinising execution.
Attention should shift from redesigning the strategy to strengthening its execution. The primary root causes of execution failure are breakdowns in systems and processes, and problems in the competence and motivation of the people responsible for execution — often both.
When companies have people with the relevant competence and the right motivation, process breakdowns can be fixed and improved through creative solutions.
The people problem, in numbers
Surveys suggest that companies fail to choose the right candidate for a job 82% of the time, and that only one in ten employees possesses the right leadership talent. Ineffective leaders undermine employee engagement and create misalignment between execution teams and the business strategy through weak communication, understanding or buy-in.
That misalignment shows up as lower employee motivation, difficulty overcoming challenges, reduced accountability and weaker executive decision-making. Building the right talent pool — and keeping it aligned — is therefore not an HR nicety but the precondition for execution success.
References
- Harvard Business Review (March 2015), “Why Strategy Execution Unravels — and What to Do About It.”
- Deloitte (October 2016), “CFO Insights — Strategy Execution: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”
- Harvard Business Review (20 November 2017), “5 Ways the Best Companies Close the Strategy-Execution Gap.”
- Gallup (2016), “Why Great Managers Are So Rare.”