Why do Great Strategies Fail?

Many great strategies get conceived but fail to take off or get completed. They somewhere miss to tag along the value that was originally intended. CEO’s are constantly battling the need for innovation and strategizing on one hand and trying to balance the execution and completion on the other.

The divine principle of creation, preservation and annihilation is the basis of all strategies or innovation. If I create something then that something needs execution. What does it take to complete the conception? The leaders today walled with people who come in with strong values and experiences but are simply the souls from the other side of heaven.  Constantly there has been a barrage between the vision and execution, and the stakeholders are not inspired enough to feel the need to execute.

A certain CEO was in a mismangled mess when had to revise his projections three times in a row. He had a perfect vision which was spot on, had an excellent direction but had a serious flaw in execution. His down the line didn’t quite see what’s in it for them. His story was not clear on what the results can bring onto the table. Another problem he had was, that he inherited his top people as those who have been promoted to the level of incompetency (typical of a structured hierarchy org). Motivation is the key driver in execution, apart from set methodology, policies and procedures etc.  Susan Abbott a well known researcher  writes “nobody wants to wash a rented car”. Its as simple as that, yes we never  did it or never heard of any one washing a rented car. She says that while motivating your team see that there is a chain that ties up directly to their results. The more visible the chain is the more ownership you have from your team. She sums it up as give people the discretionary effort so that they make that particular donation that you are looking for.

The idea is one big system and the subsystems need to be aligned seamlessly within the main system.  I would see that my innovation has empowerment at its core, succeeded by execution in that order. Then I would top this up with need based policies and procedures in order repeat the cycle till the objective is achieved. If I break this down a bit, all that the CEO needs to ensure is that he provides the right environment for his ideas to take form. He has to mother the conception and the independent systems would find their powers and function within the framework of his vision.