Execution eats Strategy for Breakfast
This line popped out at me from a LinkedIn post by Ben Ford (past guest on WhatComesNextLive, and one I have now invited back to talk about this!).
I’ll share Ben’s post below, but first, the instinctive thoughts that came to me when I reposted it. I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading what both Ben and then I said on the topic. My thoughts in response to Ben:
Ben Ford, you have got me mulling over this and excited for you and your clients with what you are talking about and focussing on.ย For now, considering some of the complex systems (multinationals, governmental orgs etc) I am working with right now, my three instinctive thoughts are:
1: Strategy is still essential, but it often works best when at a high contextual level. When I work with clients, we get it down to a one-line vision and three strategic focal areas. One page, whether a smaller business or a multinational, whether 10 staff or over 100,000.
2: Trust your system. Develop a culture that creates a machine that can solve any problem you give it. I wrote a post this week called “AI as Authentic Intelligence” and can see that your focus on execution first fits very well within that.
3: Abandon Strategic Planning. I’ve been writing about this for many years, ever since surveying twenty-five CEOs and other leaders, who told me that the average time it takes for their Strategic Plan to be “not worth the paper it is written on” was only six months.
{note: see my core post “Are you Ready for Open Leadership” here, with the image reprsenting the Open Leadership model shown above}
So, be clear on your Vision (and allow it to evolve and iterate), invest in your Culture and your “AI”, focus on execution over strategic planning.
In summary, I don’t quite agree with Ben, but contextually we agree that Strategic Planning as the corporate world knows it is no longer fit for purpose.
Ben’s post on LinkedIn here, and copied below:
๐๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ โ ๐ง๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ธ ๐๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐ด๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐
That’s the message Maj Jim Gant led with in his excellent paper, One Tribe at a Time.
That has been going round in my head since I re-read it last week!
The tempo of insurgency and disruption…
Because not doing this is the root of sooooo many problems I see in today’s world. Let’s break this down a bit.
Most businesses think would have a diagram that look more like this:
Strategy โ Operations โ Tactics
First we think up the strategy
Then we come up with an operating model
Finally we derive tacticsThis is totally the wrong way round when the world around you is moving fast!
What you should do instead is EXECUTE relentlessly. Take every single advantage you can and let the environment you find yourself in dictate your tactics.
At the same time you should of course THINK strategically. Paying attention to trends and market forces, positioning yourself in the most advantageous way.
NEVER wait for the strategy before enabling the execution!
Think about it like this: you are far more likely to execute your way to a better strategy than you are to strategize your way to better execution. It’s the simple maths of feedback loops and #OODA. Iteration wins every time.
So how do you connect the execution with the strategy then?
This is where the shearing layer of operations come in. Your operations are where you translate strategy to more effectively shape execution. It’s also where you learn the lessons from execution and feed that into your strategy.
This is how we build systems at Mission Ctrl and INSURGNT. We aggressively pursue quick wins and low hanging fruit with automation and data improvements.
Concurrently, but not waiting for alignment and co-ordination, we also work to understand the strategy.
The efficiency gains we achieve give teams back the space to build that operational connective tissue.
Summary:
Execution eats strategy for breakfast
Building a world class operations system lets you have your cake and eat it ๐