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Three Mistakes in Strategy Deployment

8 min read Bert Claesen

This is a machine-assisted translation of the original Dutch version.

Not getting the results you wanted? It might not be a problem with your strategy

Are you realizing that you are not where you wanted to be when you first set your strategy a few months back? Now you wonder why that is?

The good news is that the problem is likely not your strategy itself. Bossidy and Charan 1 explain it much better than I can, but the issue often lies in how you execute the strategy, not in how you write it.

Today, I want to share a few common mistakes that you might recognize. I invite you to avoid making them over the next three months.

The points below are real mistakes made a few months ago during the rollout of a new business strategy to the operations team.

1. No focus on the customer

The business strategy was solid: as expected, the CEO (Bob) went all-in on customer focus. It was somewhat abstract (know the customer and their needs, solve those needs like only we can...), but clear: the customer comes first.

The Operations Director translated what this meant for his departments: focus on costs (after all, the stock price must go up), shorter lead times, and a long list of fancy buzzwords. Too many words, period.

He fell into the trap of trying to sound smart instead of keeping the strategy simple. First, putting costs first made people focus on the wrong things. Individual managers saw this as their chance to cut costs inside their own department, instead of working together to lower total operating costs.

Second, the word "quality" was buried at spot number seven. An operational strategy that does not put Quality and On-Time In-Full (OTIF) delivery first is not focused on the customer. It focuses on the wrong things.

As an operational leader (and as a CEO), you always want to know if you deliver on time, if you deliver in full, and what customers think about product quality 2.

In that case, many strategic orders for new products arrived months late. That led to expensive air freight, changed commercial agreements (meaning discounts and credit notes), and so on. Of course costs ended up high!

Focusing on the basics with three simple numbers will lead to lower costs. Quality & Delivery cover this in SQDCM, and we won't forget the 'C' either 2.

Key takeaway: Listen to your leader, but use your own expertise. At the operational level, life is often simple. It is about seeing where opportunities live, not about using big words.

2. Acting like a middleman instead of adding value

Bob the CEO knows very well that people make the difference every day. His Operations Director had even set targets: employees had to use the new learning platform for x hours.

A strong strategy: focus on the customer, focus on your people.

However, during execution, "focus on people" became overly simplified. Executive leadership set a mandatory number of online training hours. People were assigned to run contests between teams, build dashboards, and send weekly reports to call out departments that were "falling behind."

There were two mistakes here:

  • Middleman behavior: Every management level simply passed down the mandatory training hours. But their real job in strategy rollout is to add value. Instead of passing down an abstract target, a leader must figure out what the platform means for their team. Where are our strengths? Where can we grow? Who needs which training? How do I make sure this isn't just a box-checking exercise with an online test? Let trainees apply what they learned in a small project. Have experienced staff coach newcomers. Make sure your people and your business grow together. Part of Bob's job is to check that abstract goals turn into concrete actions—not just watch a fancy dashboard show more logged training hours.

  • Extra roles and extra work: A role already exists to ensure people reach their targets: managers. Tracking, motivating, and inspiring your people’s growth is not something you delegate. You invest your own time into it: focus on customers, focus on people. Delegating contests and dashboards to someone else was a major error. By passing this work off, managers showed they were not needed. The team structure could have been much leaner 3.

The solution: Lead by example, hold managers accountable for translating and executing the strategy, and make sure they do not delegate core tasks. Go to the shop floor regularly (do Gemba walks) and talk with your people. See how the strategy was translated for them and how their leader handles coaching. Everyone can have their own style, but everyone must take full ownership of their role.

3. Too heavy an organization

Your organizational structure can also lock up your strategy execution. In this company, leaders had to consult multiple directors before making any decision.

That created massive overhead and wasted time. Finding a time when all those people could meet was hard. Once together, there was too much talk and potential office politics (it only took one person to start it). Directors often brought their own experts when they lacked the knowledge themselves.

You know the answer: a flatter structure with clear responsibilities so people can make quick decisions. You must trust your people's skills and leadership qualities. But that is why you hired them and why you manage them.

Let's look at how this happens, since we haven't talked about the S (Safety) and M (Morale) in SQDCM yet.

Two well-meaning choices can turn your structure into a heavy organization in three years:

  1. You want to keep your managers' span of control small so they do not burn out. HR might make rules about what is healthy. Those rules then take on a life of their own. Your job is to prevent burnout, not to create rigid rules. A rule is fine as long as it helps, but it is not set in stone. Talk about this with your HR team.

  2. Some leaders struggle to make decisions. You try to shrink their scope and reward another specialist by splitting up responsibilities. That is short-term thinking. Coach struggling managers up to standard, or create a plan to move them to a better fit. You can build an organization around people's strengths, but never around their weaknesses.

Your job as CEO remains guarding your main goals. Do not let rules that were meant to be temporary freeze your operations. Reflect on this often: Am I reaching my targets, and what key focus do I want to give my team next month?

To wrap up

Here is your checklist for the coming weeks:

  • Does your strategy focus on customers and employees? 4
  • Is that strategy translated simply into operations with a focus on the customer (SQDCM)?
  • Are your leaders taking ownership by translating goals, following up, and leading their teams?
  • How fast (or slow) are decisions made? Where can you flatten the structure and give decision power to fewer, more accountable people?

Recommended Reading

If you want to read during your time off:

  • Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown Business, 2002). ISBN 978-0-609-61057-2
  • Jan Carlzon, Moments of Truth (Ballinger, 1987). ISBN 978-0-88730-200-8
  • Liz Wiseman & Greg McKeown, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (HarperBusiness, 2010). ISBN 978-0-06-196439-8
  • Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything (Free Press, 2006). ISBN 978-0-7432-9730-1

Footnotes

  1. Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan (with Charles Burck), Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown Business, 2002). ISBN 978-0-609-61057-2. ↩

  2. SQDCM: focus on Safety, Quality, Delivery performance, Cost, Morale—in that exact order! ↩ ↩2

  3. Sadly, when managers were freed from core tasks, that extra time was often spent on office politics instead of growing the business. Keep an eye out for this! ↩

  4. Of course, other factors matter too: competition, suppliers, social context, but that is a topic for another day. ↩