Corporate strategy key for survival

Ameer Ahamed

The big question that most of us have is what separates the companies that succeed from those that don’t? At the end of the day, week , month , year.... It all comes down to one thing. It’s the successful execution of their objectives, each employee, each team, and the company itself accomplishes the things they set out to do.

The inability to execute is a universal, and intractable problem that has been defined as one of the greatest business challenges of current times. Research showns that execution fails when

* Employees don’t know or understand their teams and organization’s top goals and priorities

* Employees aren’t engaged with or committed to the goals

* Employees aren’t able to translate their goals in to action

* Organizational systems and processes aren’t aligned to support the goals

*Departments and Teams aren’t working together towards a common goal

*People aren’t held accountable for the commitments they make

A recent study of more than 11,000 people gauged the Execution Quotient XQ US employees revealed some shocking results.

No clarity to top goals - That only one in six workers understand what their companies are trying to achieve. In follow-up studies, fewer than 15 percent can list their employers’ most important goals.

No commitment to organizational goals - Only one in four feels “intensely focused” and only one in ten fully embraces the goals.

Therefore do people feel committed to goals of organizations they work for?

No line of sight between the organizational goals and the work people do - only one in five have clearly defined work goals and one in ten clearly understands the how his or her work relates to the organizations top priorities.

With all the talk about ‘cascading goals’, its clear that such a thing happens rarely.

No empowerment - people want to contribute to achieving important goals of the organization but cannot because they are eaten up by less important priorities.

By their own account, people spend only 49 percent of their time on crucial organizational goals.

One hour out of three is spent on “urgent but irrelevant” tasks while one hour in five is wasted dealing with pointless bureaucracy.

No synergy - new goals require new ways of thinking and working.

The best ideas and solutions come from true synergy.

But synergistic collaboration is sorely lacking in most organizations. Less than a third of all workers feel they can even express themselves candidly at work, much less achieve synergy. No accountability - only about half of all workers report that they feel accountable for performance.

They are rarely if ever called upon to report the progress. Only a third feel any responsibility to meet budgetary commitments.

The consequence? Serious issues fall through the cracks and errors go uncorrected. Can an organization execute its goals when its people are unclear about the goals, uncommitted to them, un-empowered to achieve them and unaccountable for them?

Over the past few years, We at FranklinCovey has been working with our global clients to help bridge this gap with an internalized process after having diagnosed the health situation. An organization can have talented people and superb strategy and still fail. Many do. The reason? “its rarely for the lack of smart or vision.

Its bad execution. As simple as that not getting things done, being indecisive, not delivering on commitments” according to former Harvard Business School’s professor Ram Charan.

The writer Ameer Ahamed is the CEO-for Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh for Franklin Covey South Asia. Master Trainer for seven Habits of Highly Effective People process, Leadership, xQ Service, four Disciplines of Execution, The Speed of Trust and many other offerings from FranklinCovey International. He is also senior Trainer and Consultant for India, Pakistan and Nepal.