Presenting strategic plans. Maybe next time include strategy execution at every step.

Matt walked into the office dressed very nicely. Matt and his partner had researched and written a beautiful strategic plan. Matt presented the target markets, the areas of focus.

The target markets were laid out carefully, with strengths, weakness, opportunities, competition, and changes in the market. Matt described the market characteristics in detail. His partner described how much they researched the target areas. The research was all secondary, from websites, articles, and studies.

Matt went on to describe the financials and the action plan. The financials had forecasts over a 2 year span with CAGRs (compound annual growth rates) figured into the numbers. It was all logical.

Matt had lost the group to whom he was presenting. There was absolutely no intent to execute any piece of the plan. The plan did not fit.

(This was a real scenario I experienced in one of the roles as an executive I had with a consultant, Matt. Not his real name.)

What went wrong?

Matt had done his homework extremely well for an academic exercise. The business, my business, Matt was supposed to present a recommended approach to grow through an alignment of product direction and development, marketing, channel development. What Matt failed to realize was that sales was a symptom of misalignment entrenched in the company with a lack of product innovation and differentiation. Yes, sales and marketing was critical, but not sufficient. Product development had fallen off a rigorous innovation path. In the software business that is a critical issue.
The market was soft, realigning the sales team was not the answer. Yes, you could argue realignment of a team is execution, but that misses the point. A deeper understanding of the situation was needed. More questioning, more open questions with discussion would have uncovered this issue. In-depth discussion about coordinated development, channel, sales, and marketing strategy execution was needed.
In hind sight this is obvious. During the fray of running day-to-day business it was not so obvious.

What did we do?

By the way, Matt and his team were not hired. We went back to the basics and started putting together a strategy for execution with lots of help, customer input and trials.
Strategy execution must be a constant drive to develop strategy, the direction and approach. Then execute to goals and associated tasks. Lastly, review and adjust on a weekly routine. Only through strategy execution did we find out what worked and what didn’t. The team pushed into new areas of product development driven by feedback. Some worked well and some did not. The effective strategy execution was a constant trial and error and execute again.
A plan created for you and thinking this will result in execution is naive. Developing a plan yourself with coaching along the way, then constantly executing and adjusting is critical.
We started executing quick turn development with coordinated quick turn marketing and sales. We would meet weekly with a coach. The coach would ask us questions on every aspect of the plan proposed. We’d discuss until we came up with a plan. Then go execute.

Quick learn-and-turn strategy execution led to excellent results.

The quick learn-and-turn strategy execution led to excellent results.
© Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com – Group of Business Proffessionals in meeting

Our strategy execution …

We’d hold biweekly webcasts presenting the latest products with brief insights into what was coming next to our best partners. Our partners and key customers gave us immediate and clear feedback. The quick learn-and-turn strategy execution led to excellent results. We were well positioned for our target market. It took about about 12 months to get it nailed down. Sales started growing, slowly at first, and then sales took off as more customers and channel partners learned about our products and how they’d benefit.

7 must-know lessons learned about strategy execution.

1. Planning is crucial with outside oversight to ask the questions no one thinks about.
2. Planning can only be done by the team doing the execution.
3. Real world conversations and trials with customers and partners are crucial.
4. Get products in front of customers for trials as soon as possible.
5. Ask a lot of open ended questions, listen, and take notes. Avoid putting your spin on the feedback–you lose the value with your version of their feedback.
6. Rework the plan constantly.
7. Execute early in the process and constantly.

Having lived through what doesn’t work and what does work, I now coach executives and their teams on strategy execution. Written plans are good. Strategy execution is what business is all about. It is messy, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. A good coach to work with you through the process can keep you on track, save you time, and get you focused on direction you are excited about.
If you want to talk through an issue around strategy execution, let’s take 20 minutes and talk business. Contact me at Phil@PhilBride.com or 503-753-9971.
Get executing today with a solid strategy and process behind you.

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