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Use this checklist of 30 tangible clues, and practical tactics, to make sure your strategic plan isn’t one of the 90% that will fail in execution.

We don’t have to look too hard to discover that strategy execution has terribly high failure rates. For example, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, in his Forbes.com article, notes that most research points to very high failure rates of strategy execution, and it can be as bad as 90%. Research from Harvard Business Review, Bridges Business Consultancy, and Kotter International also suggests that anywhere from 60-80% of organisations fail to achieve their strategic goals due to poor execution.

There are many reasons why strategy execution can fail, but there are some very visible and tangible clues. These clues are easy to spot, and offer us immediate opportunities to boost our strategy execution success. And, many of these opportunities can be easily acted upon with the tactics I’ll suggest, from our PuMP methodology.

8 categories of tactics to boost strategy execution

Because 30 tactics is quite a lot, we’ll organise them in eight categories, and you can jump to whichever resonate with you most:

  1. Depth: Was your strategic direction informed by enough analysis and thinking?
  2. Focus: Does your strategic plan communicate ruthless priorities?
  3. Change: Does your strategic plan respond to challenges and opportunities?
  4. Progress: Does your strategic plan have a mechanism for progress?
  5. Structure: Is your strategic plan designed with a navigable structure?
  6. Clarity: Are your strategic goals written so everyone understands them?
  7. Alignment: Can every team map a cause-effect link from their goals to the strategic goals?
  8. Holism: Can the strategic plan tell a unified story of changing toward the vision?

Depth: Was your strategic direction informed by enough analysis and thinking?

When the strategic plan contains much of the same goals and strategies as previous years, and there is no commentary about where the goals came from, chances are that the analysis and thinking behind its creation wasn’t deep enough. A strategic direction that doesn’t distinguish compelling change priorities won’t likely inspire the execution of anything different to business-as-usual.

Here are some clues that your strategic plan might need a bit more depth, and tactics to give it a bit more thought:

  1. No mention of the industry, competitor, market or internal analysis and their findings.

    Tactic: To get depth, without reworking your entire strategic direction, you can layer in a bit more thinking with a small variety of strategic thinking tools, like Strategyzer’s Mission Model Canvas or Business Model Canvas, McKinsey’s 7S framework, or Francis Aguilar’s evolved PESTLE analysis.
  2. Goals are very broad or generic in nature.

    Tactic: Specific goals are much easier to execute than vague goals. In PuMP we make sure that every goal is measurable, and that means it’s important to make each goal specific, not broad to clearly say what we really want. Being specific is one of the fundamental keys to successful strategy execution.
  3. Goals are action-oriented and worded as programs or projects.

    Tactic: One of PuMP’s Measurability Tests makes sure that goals describe the results we want, not actions. If you have goals that sound like actions, then ask what impact you want from the action. That’s probably your real goal.
  4. The same old KPIs or metrics or performance measures are used.

    Tactic: There’s nothing wrong with using the same KPIs if they are directly relevant to monitoring our goals. But we need to sift out the KPIs that can misdirect strategy execution. To do this we set a relevance score for each KPI, against the goal it is supposed to be evidence of.

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Focus: Does your strategic plan communicate ruthless priorities?

Peter Drucker is attributed with the wisdom that the key to strategy is omission. A bloated, wordy strategic plan with lots of goals and strategies is a fair sign that it’s not enough was left out. Time-poor managers and employees can easily be overwhelmed with too many new goals, and strategy execution grinds to a halt as a result.

Here are some clues that your strategic plan might need some more ruthless prioritisation, along with a few tactics to trim it down:

  1. There are more than 5 or 6 strategic goals.

    Tactic: Ruthless prioritisation is a fundamental principle of FranklinCovey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX). They encourage leaders to focus on only one or two Wildly Important Goals at a time. Maybe your goals can have a sequence of focus, over time, rather than all at once?
  2. Some strategic goals mention several performance aspects.

    Tactic: Again in PuMP’s Measurability Tests, we can find after we “deweasel” we end up with one goal that really is several goals. We make sure to only keep the goals that should, can and will be achieved in this next round of strategy execution.
  3. The set of strategic goals cover most or all of business operations.

    Tactic: A strategic direction is different to a business model, and we need both. A constructive step to ruthlessly prioritise the goals for strategy execution is to separate business-as-usual goals from change goals, so they aren’t lost but also won’t dilute strategy execution.
  4. There are lots of actions and initiatives listed.

    Tactic: Every action or initiative should exist to achieve a result or impact. We use PuMP’s Results Map to decide on the alignment of action to result very clearly, so we can focus strategy execution on the right actions.

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Change: Does your strategic plan respond to challenges and opportunities?

Too many strategic plans are really not that different to action plans. Strategy execution isn’t about getting stuff done that’s simply part of business-as-usual operations. We certainly need to manage business operations, but we also need a clear strategy for change. The world doesn’t stay the same, and our organisations need to keep responding to a relentless flow of new challenges and opportunities.

Here are some clues that your strategic plan might be a bit too static, and tactics to breathe some change energy into it:

  1. Some goals are written with words like ‘maintain’ or ‘continue to’, rather than ‘increase’ or ‘decrease’.

    Tactic: When we have goals to keep things the same, it might be worth reflecting on why. Are we afraid of failing to make an improvement? Or haven’t we done enough strategic thinking to surface the real changes our organisation needs to make for future viability and success? It might help to reframe goals (and targets) as intentions, rather than expectations.
  2. There are no time-series measures for the strategic goals.

    Tactic: An absence of measures, in general, can leave goals a bit too qualitative and subjective. But if there are measures but they’re not able to track change over time, it makes it very hard to see the potential for improvement. Try to choose a few measures for your goals, and make sure those measures are defined so they can track change regularly through time.
  3. There are no targets attached to measures.

    Tactic: Targets are a statement – sometimes a commitment – to change. They quantify the size of change (improvement) that we want, so an absence of targets can also suggest we’ve not thought enough about the change we want or need. It is possible to set sensible targets for KPIs so they motivate strategy execution that leads to improvement.

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Progress: Does your strategic plan have a mechanism for progress?

The success of any strategy execution is based on exactly how much change is expected, and exactly how much change is achieved, through the execution of chosen strategic initiatives. While the success of project management depends on on-time and on-budget performance, the success of strategy execution depends on the size of improvements made through those projects.

Here are some clues that you might need a better way to evaluate strategy execution progress, and tactics to set that up:

  1. There is no mention of current performance baselines for the strategic measures.

    Tactic: If a strategic plan is about making changes, those changes are relative to a baseline. We can calculate a quantitative baseline for each KPI in a way that can then be compared to the KPI’s target, to show us the actual size of change we need.
  2. Measures are not set with a frequent enough calculation cadence to monitor change throughout the strategy’s timeline.

    Tactic: If we only measure at the start and at the end of our strategy execution cycle, we can only know if we succeeded for failed. What’s better is to measure appropriate KPIs frequently enough see changes during our strategy execution cycle, in time to make course corrections.
  3. Targets are generic, like ‘improve by 10%’.

    Tactic: If a target can be interpreted differently by different people, it’s not very useful. In PuMP we make sure to express targets in the same units as their measures, so if we are measuring dollars, our target is a dollar value.
  4. Targets are included in text, rather than next to their related measures.

    Tactic: When we have a quantitative baseline, measure frequently enough, and have a target to strive for, we have the basis to create a powerful chart that quantifies our performance gap, and shows exactly how quickly (or slowly) we are approaching our target.

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Structure: Is your strategic plan designed with a navigable structure?

The structure and layout of many strategic plans is more complex than it needs to be, with too many sections, too many layers and often some redundancy. It’s a sign that a bit more logical thinking could help make the layout of the plan easier to navigate and align to. This is where frameworks like the Balanced Scorecard can help. If people get lost in the plan, they’ll get lost in its execution, too.

Here are some clues that your strategic plan’s layout could be overly complex, and tactics to simplify it:

  1. There are strategic themes and then goals and then objectives and then strategies and then actions and then action measures, and so on…

    Tactic: The minimalist but workable structure for a strategic plan has five elements: strategic themes, strategic goals or objectives, strategic performance measures, performance targets, and improvement initiatives. Find out how closely you can condense your strategic direction into this five element framework.
  2. You can’t immediately see which parts of the plan should be measured (is it the goals or the objectives or the results or the strategies?)

    Tactic: We can use project management to monitor and manage the progress of strategic initiatives. But what’s more challenging is measuring the impact of those initiatives. The impact we want is described by the goals in our plan, and it’s those goals that are worth measuring.
  3. The goals and measures and actions for all the strategic themes span multiple pages.

    Tactic: A strategy should tell a unified story of the journey toward a vision. But strategy stories are not linear, so pages get in the way. That’s why in PuMP we use the Results Map as a way to visually summarise the story of strategy on a single page.
  4. It’s hard to see the logical relationship between and among themes, goals, measures, and actions.

    Tactic: Again, the PuMP Results Map helps us see the logical connection among goals and measures and actions. We don’t often do it, but we can also bring themes into the Results Map through ‘slices’. As mentioned earlier, we can easily map the connections between results, their measures, and the actions to achieve them.

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Clarity: Are your strategic goals written so everyone understands them?

The language used in the vast majority of strategic plans is broad, vague and jargonistic. It’s management-speak that we refer to as weasel words. The problem with weasel words is that different people will have different interpretations of what they mean. If we don’t share the same understanding of a strategic direction, it has no chance of being executed as intended.

Here are the clues that your strategic plan might need a bit more depth, and tactics to remedy the situation:

  1. Strategic themes are written with just two or three vague words, without a detailed description of what they mean.

    Tactic: Many shortcuts are taken in how we commit our strategic directions to paper or pixels, and words are one such shortcut. It’s nice to have a concise way to anchor strategic themes, but somewhere, make sure to write a readable sentence or three that clarifies the context and meaning for each strategic theme.
  2. Strategic goals or objectives are written with weasel words, like adaptive, efficient, diverse, innovative, strengthened, etc.

    Tactic: Specific goals are much easier to execute than vague goals. In PuMP we use Measurability Tests to make sure goals are executable and achievable, and one test is for ‘weasel words’ which tend to be broad and ambiguous. It is possible to change weasel words to clearly and specifically say what we really want is one of the fundamental keys to successful strategy execution.
  3. Strategic performance measures are expressed vaguely like Customer Advocacy, Sustainability Index, or Productivity, and without descriptions of their calculation method.

    Tactic: The defining feature of a KPI or performance measure is that it is quantitative. If the quantification isn’t clear, no one will know what data is needed or what calculation to use, so measures will not be implemented. In PuMP we follow this recipe for writing a quantitative measure.
  4. When you ask three people what a single goal means, you get at least three different answers.

    Tactic: There have been leaders that didn’t believe me when I told them this. Many leaders trust that the words they articulated their strategic goals with will be understood the same by everyone. Go ahead and test this assumption! Ask a few managers and employees (in a way they won’t feel threatened or fearful of being wrong) about their interpretations of one of your strategic goals.

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Alignment: Can every team map a cause-effect link from their goals to the strategic goals?

When we talk about strategic alignment, there are two important types of alignment that make strategy execution so much smoother. The first is how measures align to goals, to make sure the right evidence is available. The second type of alignment is how each team can connect their work to the achievement of one or more strategic goals.

Here are some clues that your strategic plan might feel a bit hard to connect with, and tactics to make it easier for everyone to align to:

  1. The strategic plan contains operational goals and actions, not just strategic ones.

    Tactic: It happens often that a leadership team inadvertently blends operational goals into their strategic goals. But for the rest of the organisation to own their part of strategy execution, they need to own their own goals. So let go of the operational goals that fall out of strategic planning, and let teams develop their own.
  2. Departmental or business unit plans try to align to the corporate strategy by copying the same goals or objectives.

    Tactic: Every part of an organisation exists because it has a unique role to play. Alignment, therefore, means each team finds their unique contribution to achieving one or more of the strategic goals. Cause-effect logic is what the threads of alignment are made of, and a Results Map helps every team trace the threads of how their goals align to strategic goals.
  3. Performance measures don’t provide direct evidence of the goals they sit next to.

    Tactic: If a measure sits next to a goal, it’s meant to be direct evidence of the degree to which that goal is being achieved. It takes a bit of practice to get KPIs aligned correctly to the right organisational level, where they are best put to use.

Holism: Can the strategic plan tell a unified story of changing toward the vision?

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. A powerful strategic direction will tell a single and integrated story about what everyone will focus on for the coming year or so. But if the strategic direction is more like a linear collection of independent goals, strategy execution can easily miss leverage and use up more time and resources than it needs to.

Here are some clues that your strategic direction might feel a bit disjointed, and tactics to stitch it together:

  1. When you ask people how their work contributes to the overall strategy, they stare back at you blankly (or bluff through a weasel-word answer).

    Tactic: There is no quick fix for an organisation full of unaligned teams. The best approach is to take three stages: start with one team and get them aligned, then let more teams volunteer, and then sanction your approach and formally roll it out.
  2. There is no preface or introduction in the strategic plan of the general overarching theme or direction.

    Tactic: Any story needs a central plot, or theme. An armada needs a unified heading. A flock of migrating birds needs a shared destination. Imagine what would happen if they didn’t. The same goes for any organisation. If you cannot describe the overarching direction of your organisation, perhaps start by checking if your vision statement is an umbrella for your current strategic goals.
  3. It’s not obvious how each strategic goal relates to or impacts on or synergises with the other goals.

    Tactic: What ties results or goals together in a PuMP Results Map is logic, but that logic is built upon three types of relationships: cause-effect, conflict and companion. To help stitch your goals together so they tell a unified story, map the different types of relationships they have to each other.
  4. No-one in the leadership team can easily and off-the-cuff summarise the strategic direction into words.

    Tactic: After building his Results Map with his leadership team, a CEO said the greatest impact for him was that he now had 12 people to share the same story of strategy with the rest of the organisation. Even if you don’t use a Results Map, craft a way that the entire leadership team can tell the same story of the direction and priorities for the organisation.

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PuMP is a complete approach to make any strategy executable…

Most of these tactics are derived from the techniques that comprise the PuMP methodology. A thorough and efficient way to boost the execution of your strategic direction is to adopt PuMP, starting with your leadership team.