About five years ago, I began to notice a trend in our follow-up calls with past clients.
About half the clients were executing on the majority of the strategy and half weren’t – one or two had hardly executed any of the strategies they had paid for (and enthusiastically approved).
So what was going on?
The answer was half didn’t have the systems in place to execute a strategy well.
They couldn’t turn the steps listed into the strategy into an immediate action plan (i.e. who will be doing what and when). No one was assigned to execute the tactics listed in the strategy by specific dates. And not only do you need to give the member accountability, but also the training, support, and confidence to ask for help when they need it.
Strategic success only happens when the strategy gets executed. We learned we had to not only complete the strategy but guide the implementation as well. This was such an important insight, in fact, that we made the final lesson of our Strategic Community Management all about execution.
I was reminded again last week just how important great execution is. If you make it a habit, you’ll reap the rewards.