There is a disconnect in difficulty between strategy and execution.
While strategy is held in high esteem and effectively communicated across various academic disciplines, business leaders often lament the lack of emphasis on teaching and mastering execution.
Indeed, one cannot deny that there are consistently more great ideas than the capacity to execute them. It is no wonder that operational executives who perform at a high level are in constant demand. They navigate through change seamlessly, ensuring that it has no adverse impact on their company’s ability to hit targets, time and again.
Technology’s shift
Nowhere is the shift in technology’s paradigm more starkly visible than in the ongoing transformation happening at this moment. A select few corporate leaders are not just adopting but also adapting at a breathtaking pace. They make the late majority seem like laggards, tentatively probing in the dark, while the proverbial lights of the early adopters are already shining bright.
Unlike minor shifts, the transition to generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is seismic. It is comparable to the personal computer wave, the emergence of the World Wide Web in the1990s, the advent of cloud computing, or the epoch of mobile phones. Even these comparisons under-emphasise the swift nature of the current transition.
Consumer-centric technologies have always grown quickly. Netflix took only 40 months to reach one million consumers, Facebook just ten. Dropbox had seven months between user one and one million, but ChatGPT’s one millionth adopter showed up within just five days. The question we are left with is how strategy can be successfully executed in the face of such rapid change.
Business leaders are grappling with how best to navigate this fluctuating future and often contemplate adopting more entrepreneurial models to fortify their business systems and assist teams in coping. It is a challenging world out there, where the most effective leaders are succeeding not solely due to their years of experience but because of their proficiency in leveraging tools only recently made available to them. Time will tell how long this advantage holds.
Coping with change
In the realm of software, an operating system serves as a low-level support infrastructure for your computer’s fundamental functions. Similarly, in the business context, an operating system comprises a set of execution principles that offer infrastructure to support goals and ensure accountability.
Just as operating systems in software underpin more complex programs, execution principles should be simple and standardised to withstand a myriad of complicated challenges and anticipated changes ahead.
Execution is a learned discipline and can be approached broadly in one of two ways. In my start-up, HouseME, we initially focused on ‘jugaad’, a term that can be inadequately translated to a unique quick-fix or problem-solving approach to get a job done. This aligns with the oft-quoted culture of ready-fire-aim that many start-up founders in the United States profess to follow, and it certainly has its place. Iterative problem-solving provides great insight, hones a team’s operational skill, and allows for robust product–market fit analysis. It is particularly effective when you know the market and are introducing a disruptive change.
However, the job of today’s executive is not necessarily to initiate change but rather to execute a clear strategy in the face of it. And that requires a rather different approach.
Execution principles – the second way
Standardisation. Simplification. Rationalisation. So read an extract from our strategy document as we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (find out more about our journey here: The First Kudu).
In retrospect, it is easy to see that these directives were instructive. We were correcting mistakes that should not have happened in the first place. We had abandoned our operating system principles and were running only complex programs. We must have taken a few wrong turns.
If you are running a company that already has product–market fit and is now seeking scale and excellence, these principles following – as they should have been for HouseME – are your annual operating system blueprint. Let jugaad go.:
Principle 1: Focus on only one goal
- Make it measurable.
- Make it meaningful.
Especially as the world shifts around you, hold to the core values, vision, and targets that you set for yourself. Communicate this openly, repeatedly, and passionately. Commit to the single most important number that you must deliver on and find a way to connect every single person in the team to that deliverable.
In our case, our single most important goal was new leases signed. That should have been our sole focus in 2020. Instead, we had concentrated on five products across two user profiles. Too much.
Principle 2: Pull the right levers
- Work only on projects that influence the one goal.
- Capture objective project data as feedback on a daily basis.
As work is delegated, each project or workstream must have its own measurable targets that are easily and inarguably calculated. The impact of a team achieving their singular project’s target should translate directly upwards into your company’s target and vision.
HouseME did not sequence projects correctly. We had several people working on various priorities, which meant there were no priorities. As the world changes, do not be distracted by other opportunities presenting themselves. Reiterate that each day’s opportunity cost is incalculably valuable and, therefore, daily progress must be made.
Principle 3: Create a cadence
- Accountability must be a regular feature of all meetings.
- The selected levers must be accurately and transparently displayed.
Assuming that the right people are actively engaged and in the right roles in your organisation, the scoreboard keeps everyone honest and aligned. It would have been worth investing in a slightly more sophisticated system than what we had built at HouseME for this purpose. You should build confidence and motivation as regular data reflects your team’s progress.
Recovery
It is neither too late nor too far removed from your current management’s ability to execute upon an operating system like this one. Executing a strategy may remain the hardest aspect of your job, but the speed of change should not detract from your focus on the fundamental basics. Executing against an operating system provides guardrails and structures that will promote aligned innovation and, counterintuitively, is more likely to see new tools tried by your employees, in contrast to when they feel overwhelmed and unsure about where their responsibility starts and ends.
Rather than chasing the latest and greatest tools that provide speed and output assistance, return to your underlying systems infrastructure for prioritisation, allocation, and accountability to set your company up for genuine growth.