How do Executives Execute?
We all have great ideas in our heads and carry them around for days, months and even years. In business these might be crucial strategies for moving your business to another level or realising your strategic objectives for the year ahead. What sets the leading organisations apart from the chasing pack is being able to deliver on strategy quickly and with efficiency there
by reaching their customers ahead of the pack.
In a global survey conducted for the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2017, eighty-eight percent of C-level respondents said that executing strategic initiatives successfully would be “essential” or “very important” for their organisations’ competitiveness over the next three years. Forty-five per-cent of respondents describe execution as “essential” compared with just 40% who say the same about creating appropriate strategies. This suggests that they see execution as marginally the more important of the two.
Strategies do little in the way of increasing your profits because they’re just plans. It’s the turning of theses into a deliverable such as a new product, service or efficiency result that impacts on profit.
So how do you improve on the delivery of your business strategies or how do executives execute? If you consider that you know your business better than anyone why not put in place your plan to deliver what you need. Essentially your trying to find what is constraining your business.
Start by breaking down the different elements of your business. All businesses are made up of management, staff, processes and systems. If you consider these in an integrated way it should shed light on the weak points. Once you’ve done that follow these pointers.
- Assess your current capability for getting things done
- Draw up a plan on where you need to get to and consider delivery dates
- Identify the gaps for executing these strategies
- Plug the gaps
What you are doing here is assessing how good your business is at managing projects. Projects are what sustains a business enabling it to change to reflect the markets. Project management is the why, how, when and how much of getting things done. It’s not science or engineering its people with a plan, focus, drive and a deadline.
Measure your project management capability for free now. Contact Brian Cleere at brian.cleere@curo.ie for a free consultation and assessment with no obligation.