Six Fatal Sins of Strategy Management
Strategy Management can be challenging for any business. Given our 25 years of experience helping private companies develop and execute their strategies, here are eight of the most common mistakes we have seen. While this list is certainly not all-inclusive, hopefully it will prompt some debate around the conference table at your next management meeting. Avoid the following and your strategy will be “saved.”
- Strategy Management as an Annual Event. Getting your leadership team together only once a year to review and set strategic direction, greatly reduces the likelihood of realizing the strategy’s objectives.
- Strategy Without Action. Failing to develop a specific, comprehensive action plan is the single most important component of strategy management.
- Failing to Cascade the Plan to All Levels. Strategy should be a part of everyone’s agenda. The action plan will draw employees into the process, hold them accountable, and help ensure there is alignment with the strategy.
- Conducting Business as Usual After Agreeing to the Strategy. It is so much easier not to change—to do things the way they were always done. Once you have invested precious resources toward developing the strategy, don’t let it end up on the shelf collecting dust.
- Lacking a scorecard. Metrics, either qualitative or quantitative, help everyone in the organization track the strategy’s progress. The right metrics will keep everyone focused on the strategy’s agenda.
- Failing to make the tough choices. Strategy management requires “TLC;” time, leadership and courage to change. It’s easier to maintain the status quo, but leadership requires tough choices for the good of the organization. This takes time and courage.
As a discipline for making better decision about your business, strategy management requires patience and persistence. While there are challenges, the benefits can be significant. Let us know your thoughts and share with us your own experiences. Please feel free to share this article with others.
“To be strategic is to concentrate on what is important, on those few objectives that can give us a comparative advantage, on what is important to us rather than others, and to plan and execute the resulting plan with determination and steadfastness.” Richard Koch
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