In Crisis, we need to focus on both strategy and execution –  a bold but executable strategy. 

“Under pressure, you can win with your Mind”

Tiger Woods

The strategy is all about Idea & Plan, Execution is converting the Ideas into Reality. It requires a strong will, an agile mindset, and a willingness to learn.

Do you agree? A strategy is a Hallucination without Execution, so what we can do to make execution effective?

Continuous Review – Internal and Market Conditions

Market Research & Trends – Define the critical external factors that will have direct and indirect impact & how they are changing. Can see any trends with some factual data.

Gemba Walk –Don’t believe only on the publicly available information, try to experience it yourself. Be on the ground to get the experience, capture the much-needed data so that you can build fact-based strategy and improvement.

SWOT Analysis – this can not be a one-time activity. We need to keep on revisiting SWOT analysis continuously. Each factor-like Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats need to be analyzed with time and changing conditions if there is any change. Many times we find our strength turns into weakness & the important part is we should know it. It also implies Opportunities and Threats where based on changing the market where we can see new opportunities evolving. A classic example of this is, new opportunities like Virtual Conferences/meetings/training as well as Healthcare needs have created due to the current COVID crisis.

Small Changes and Quick Validations

As we do get facts and data of market changes, as a Business Leader we need to be proactive to make amends in the planned strategy and implement it in a small way. We need to implement the concept of “Fail Fast” where if the changes made does not give the required result, we can Pivot and analyze the data to adopt new amends and decision on strategy.

It’s is a continuous cycle of improvement. Whatever works and gives positive results is scaled in the same way with an ongoing collection of data, analysis of the new data to make informed, fact-based decisions. The data, facts provide a much-needed foundation for Leaders to acknowledge changing conditions, market, and make needed changes in the strategy.

Alignment with Objectives and Goals

Agility can be impactful if those are aligned with common goals and objectives. So the facts and information gathered time-time can be seen objectively to ensure the right decision towards the planned Goal. Strategy always needs to be a framework with guidelines rather the hard rules. One should keep on revisiting this framework and guidelines to make required tweaking or if needed making pivot for the same. We need to focus on continuous communication the Goals and Objectives of an Organization for the right kind of collaboration.

Detach from sunken cost

With agile strategy and execution, many times our efforts put go in vain, it becomes additional data set for the right type of decisions. Attaching ourselves with the efforts, emotions and thought of the loss of efforts, Pivoting & Making changes in the strategy becomes difficult. Leaders need to acknowledge the fact that there would be possible sunken costs in the agile execution. It’s far better than the cost of loss of opportunity and quality if we don’t adopt agile strategy and execution. Leaders need to provide confidence to the team to avoid any insecurities among the ground-level team. If the ground-level team works without any fear and insecurity, we can see effective teamwork and efforts.

The transition from fixed contract to an agile contract for Vendor & Partner management

Many activities and execution depend on external partners and vendors. Leaders need to ensure the agile strategy and execution extends to the vendor and partners. There need to have growth and risk sharing understanding and framework with vendors and partners to enjoy trust and collaboration between the involved parties.

“Strategy is Opinion and Execution is Fact”

Dean Leffingwell, ScaledAgile Framework

So be agile, be open to listen, understand, and analyze the market signals & take fact-based decisions with small implementation and continuous review. Feel free to write your views to contact@smmentors.com