You’ve heard it before: “We’ve got the strategy set, we know what needs to be done, now the rest is easy.“
We hear it from: business owners who are starting a new initiative, who are starting a business, and who are developing a growth initiative. We hear it a lot.
Yet – strategy is successfully implemented less than 50% of the time. Some believe it is as low as 10% to 30%. And even worse, IT projects are infamous for their low implementation success rate.
And one reason, as described by Richard Rumelt in his recent book Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, is that it’s not strategy that’s being developed but Goals. Goals are easy – we want to grow 10% next year. The hard part is finding how to grow by 10%.
Consider this regarding a 10% growth initiative:
- What do you need to do specifically to grow?
- And first–Is this in fact the right thing to do?
- Does it address the barrier to growth as it exists for your company at this moment in the marketplace?
- Who will do it?
- And what will they have to forego to support the growth target? In other words, what will not get done by them to support the new goal?
- Do you know if you have the resources (cash, time, talent) to do it?
- And what implication does this really have for your company?
Clearly answering these questions is the harder part.
Is it any wonder than that implementing goals (which is often misnamed – implementing strategy) is so difficult?
Our caution and support to you as a business owner or a leader in a business: It is important not to have your employees suffer through attempting to implement a poorly thought out goal.
Developing strategy is a challenge. It takes thoughtfulness and time—the goal is the easy part – figuring out the best way forward is much more challenging. As you develop strategy to move toward your goal, you need to, as a start, address the questions above and to define actions and the consequences of those actions on your business. Your success rate will be much higher.
Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting
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