Reinforce your collective execution skills

How well a company performs depends primarily on how well the people in the organization can pull together to collectively execute operational and strategic decisions. Without this collective ability, even the best strategies will produce disappointing results. The former CEO of Porsche, Peter Schultz, put it this way: “Imperfect, but well-executed decisions are better than great decisions that are never implemented.”

A number of studies have shown that the Achilles’ heel of many companies is their persistent inability to execute decisions collectively. A survey of 276 business leaders conducted by The Economist in 2004 found that 57 percent of companies had failed to implement their strategic initiatives in the preceding three years. Another global study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton revealed that three out of every five employees consider the execution ability of their organization to be mediocre, without necessarily accusing managers of sparing their efforts!

The ability of an organization to implement its strategic decisions depends on what hundreds or even thousands of employees do every day. Each day, these people make decisions based on the information they have at hand and their understanding of the stakes. To guide the decisions and initiatives of the organization’s members, those at the top often focus on adapting the organizational structure and designing suitable processes. Yet, however important these key drivers may be, experience shows that the best organizational chart and the clearest processes in the world are not enough to ensure that all of the decisions made every day at every level translate into good strategic execution. Rather, individual employees must grasp the urgency of the situation and feel responsible for doing the right thing!