Where Your Strategy Goes to Die No. 6 – Not giving it explicit time
Am I the only one who loves this time between Christmas and New Year for work? I don’t have meetings. I don’t usually do a full day. But the time I have is spent in thinking bigger.
It’s gold. Time to step back and think through priorities and plans.
It’s also an illustration of another place where strategy goes to die – lack of time given explicitly to strategy.
Or, to be exact, lack of time given to the \*delivery\* of strategy.
I’ve seen many companies carve out the time to create strategy. The retreat. The awayday. The leadership team meetings. And before that, the PowerPoint prep time.
Yet we somehow feel that once the strategy’s been agreed, we don’t need to carve out intentional, explicit time for delivering it. Or if we do, then that time is the first thing to go if a client meeting comes up. Or a catch-up with a colleague. Or even an email inbox that needs clearing.
Strategic execution for leadership teams is made up of at least three types of activities. Time to create, time to meet / communicate / delegate, and time to do.
For example…
We’re going to focus on retail as a target market for us. That’s what came out of the strategy sessions. Now someone needs to sit down and figure out how. That may involve research, planning, writing – much of it solitary. Hard thinking time. Then we need to meet the team, brief outsourcers or agencies, talk to clients. And then we actually have to do some doing. Producing, delivering, selling.
All of that needs time carved out. And it needs to be respected.
But too often I see either no time in people’s calendars, or a loose commitment to do it “when we get a chance”.
That’s not executing your strategy – that’s killing it.
And in a long, drawn out way so we barely notice it disappearing.
But it is totally avoidable.
As we start 2022, if you want your strategy to be more than a PowerPoint deck, join me in my complimentary online workshop “Where your 2022 strategy will go to die, and what you can do about it”. Only for CEOs of companies with 12+ employees / £1.5m+ revenue.
Details behind the hashtag – #WhereYourStrategyGoesToDie. Or just PM me.
Will 2022 be another year of a strategy at best vaguely met? Of being a CEO unable to step back from the day-to-day to do the things your company needs to meet it's ambitions? Of having a purpose and values that don't directly connect to everything you do? We're looking for an intimate beta group of CEOs (10 to 40 employees) to join us on this upcoming webinar to talk through our Build on Purpose framework for making strategy, purpose and values happen.