Execute the plan, monitor progress and performance, and provide ongoing support. Take corrective action (adjust or revise, as needed) Effective communication is critical to the successful strategic implementation of any plan, whether it's an organizational strategic plan or an operational or marketing plan, says Linda Pophal, executive director of Strategic Communications. The people needed to support the plan must be informed of the plan and its importance to the organization. In addition, all employees should know why the plan was developed, what it means for the company, who will be involved in its implementation, and how they can contribute to its success.
For most companies, execution is where strategies will die. The Harvard Business Review reports that 75 percent of organizations struggle to implement a strategy. McKinsey finds that 70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their objectives. And CEO magazine even states that the main factor behind 750 bankruptcies over a 25-year period was a bad strategy.
While success varies from organization to organization, we looked at some of our most effective strategy activation programs to discover what traits they had in common. Here are five best practices and leadership tools for successfully executing your strategy based on our knowledge from more than 24 years of experience with clients in various industries. Leave your regular PowerPoint presentation and a 30-minute meeting. Think of a wide variety of ways to reach your audience through digital experiences, in-person events, tangible items, and one-on-one talks about coffee.
Consider the best ways to reach each audience and what practical participatory activities you need, in what sequence, to promote participation and tell your story of change in a continuous and coherent way. If you need a starting point, try our worksheet on the basic activation blocks. Adequate human and financial resources are critical to successful implementation. A key outcome of strategic planning is an action plan that lists concrete initiatives to achieve its objectives.
It includes a schedule, the names of the employees who will carry out each action, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor progress. One of the things we've discovered over the past two years is that strategic preparation is an important part of the successful implementation of a strategy.