It’s all about strategy execution

It’s all about strategy execution: seven inspirational leadership stories

Introduction

Imagine you run a removals company. And every day, of the 100 boxes you move for your customers, you lose 60 of them. How long do you think you would stay in business? Or imagine you are a tennis player. And every match you play, you hit every other ball into the net. How many matches do you think you would win?

According to research published in the Harvard Business Review, “Companies realise only 40-60 percent of their strategies potential value. The rest is lost on the way or never makes it over the net.

Strategy execution is all about realising the full potential of your strategy – and not limiting yourself to only 50, 60 or 70 percent

The numbers don’t look great – and over the last ten years, many companies have started to realise that it takes much more than a great strategy to be number one in their industry. You need to turn that great strategy into great performance.

That’s where strategy execution comes in. It bridges the gap between brilliant strategies and superior performance. Led by Balanced Scorecard inventors, Kaplan and Norton and best-selling authors Bossidy and Charan, strategy execution has become a fast-growing bleep on the radar screens of top executives.

But simply appearing on that radar is not enough to make it happen. Each company, large or small, needs to master crucial strategy execution skills.

So, strategy execution is no longer the black hole that drains performance. Organisations today are aware of the performance lost through bad Strategy Execution. But in order to take the next step – to close that gap – organisations need more. Knowing that your organisation loses between 40 and 60 percent of its strategic potential on the execution highway between the city strategy and the city performance is an interesting fact but does not really help solve your problem.

Strategy execution or performance management is a complex process. In fact, it’s a mix of several processes – and the ideal process picture is different for each organisation. But even with a different mix, each best-in-class performance management process should include some basic building blocks. Luckily, many of them are readily available within most organisations.

What is often lacking, however, is the right skills to integrate and align all of these different building blocks. In this resource, seven senior executives will tell you how they deal with this challenge.

It’s all about strategy execution: seven inspirational leadership stories

It’s all about strategy execution: seven inspirational leadership stories

Seven inspirational leadership stories share light on how to identify and develop the right skills needed to build a best-in-class performance management process.

Download File

About the author

Jeroen De Flander is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on strategy execution and a highly regarded keynote speaker. He has shared the stage with prominent thinkers like Michael Porter, Costas Markides, Roger Martin, Robert Kaplan & David Norton and helped more than 23,500 managers in 35+ countries master the necessary execution skills.

His first book Strategy Execution Heroes reached the Amazon bestseller list in 5 countries and was nominated for Management Book of the Year 2012 in the Netherlands. His second book, The Execution Shortcut, reached the #3 spot in its category on Amazon.

Jeroen is co-founder of the performance factory – a leading research, training, and advisory firm focused solely on helping individuals and organizations increase performance through best-in-class strategy execution.

He has worked with several business schools including London Business School, IMD, Vlerick, Solvay, and Tias. For several years, he was the responsible manager worldwide of the Balanced Scorecard product line for Arthur D. Little, a leading strategy consulting firm.

He has advised 75+ companies including Atos Worldline, AXA, Bridgestone, Brussels Airport, CEMEX, Credit Suisse, GDFSUEZ, Honda, ING, Johnson & Johnson, Komatsu, Nike and Sony on various strategy and strategy execution topics.