Strategies to Close the Execution Gap

Introduction

Closing the execution gap between your business plan and its real-world execution can be challenging. While having a solid plan is essential, it is equally important to ensure that this plan translates into tangible and desired results. Many businesses face difficulties in achieving this, often failing to recognize and address performance issues promptly. This is where the execution gap arises, leading to setbacks and missed opportunities.

Common signs of the Execution Gap include:

• Treating everything as a priority, allowing urgent tasks to overshadow important ones

• Teams overcommitting by taking on too many priorities, leading to insufficient progress as they spread their efforts too thinly

• Conflicting priorities among different teams within the business

• Inadequate or incorrect measures to assess and track performance

• Lack of clear and regular communication to maintain alignment

• Issues or roadblocks to success not being promptly identified or addressed – the proverbial “elephant in the room”

Where to start on closing the Execution Gap?

First, get clarity on what needs to be done. Ensure that you, your leaders, and their teams are all clear on the priorities and the reasons behind them.

Having these priorities written down and consistently understood across the business is crucial for alignment. Leaders play a key role in determining how best to achieve this, by whom, and when.

Agree on what must be done in the next quarter or planning period.

Tackle the right number and scale of priorities within the planning period e.g. monthly, quarterly in mind.

• The “right” number and scale of priority actions you take on will depend on the team’s size and capability, as well as the scale and complexity of the tasks required to succeed. Getting the balance right between too many and not enough “stretch” will take time and effort to get right. Should you aim for more than you can realistically achieve (shoot for Mars but be happy with reaching the moon) or set more realistic expectations? Initially at least we advise starting with realistic goals and communicate them as the minimum to achieve. Once your team consistently hits these targets, it’s time to raise the bar and accelerate!

• For small to medium businesses, achieving meaningful traction with more than three key priorities within a given quarter is nigh on impossible. Some teams may be able to handle more or fewer priorities, and leaders must continually assess their effective capacity as they review and assess results. In our experience, it is better to start with one or two priorities and “nail these” before expanding the number and scale of priorities in subsequent quarters. With the right process and mindset, ensuring early success and traction on fewer priorities will build team confidence and “achievement muscle”, allowing for careful expansion over time of the number and scale of priorities you can successfully execute.

• When developing priorities, leaders must review and assess whether any existing work, initiatives, and commitments will impact successfully achieving the priorities. Are there internal conflicts likely to arise between teams or externally (e.g., with customers, suppliers, or partners) that need consideration in setting and meeting the priority targets? Is it necessary to pause or stop some existing activities before addressing the priorities, or reduce/rescope the priorities? Leaders need to work through these questions and agree on a plan for mitigating and managing any impacts, both before finalising and communicating the priorities and also when regularly reviewing progress over the quarter or planning period. It is up to the Leaders to limit the number and scale of priorities to an achievable level in any given period.

• Often issues will only become apparent once you are on the journey. This makes it critical the Leadership team is tracking progress, surfacing issues and dealing with them quickly.

Getting everyone clear and on the same page regarding the priorities and how many to tackle at one time, being clear with everyone on any trade-offs, and having an effective weekly review and issue management process in place will significantly reduce your Execution Gap. We find that businesses working with daily huddles or stand-ups and a weekly “pulse” or review meeting, along with a quarterly review and re-set approach, achieve a good balance between both maintaining clarity on what needs to be done and staying on track.

In upcoming blog articles, we will explore these additional key success factors that contribute to reducing the Execution Gap:

• Implementing the right measures to achieve faster results or quickly identify and address issues hindering progress

• Regularly communicating and reviewing results

• Ensuring your meetings are more effective and efficient

• Identifying and addressing issues that delay or prevent you and your team from achieving success

• Further refining your planning and execution processes to incorporate long-term goals and priorities

Working with our Clients, Management Response have evolved the Plan2Execute framework that has been designed specifically for small to medium sized businesses. We seperate the planning into two different horizons but have a single unified Execution process that ensures clarity and traction.

a) The “Immediate Pathway” caters for the “today” and near-term future e.g. anywhere between three and the next 12 months. Getting this in place and operating well will help you to tighten the focus on what really needs doing now, improve clarity and focus across your team and reduce the time and effort to achieve better results and outcomes. You can download our free Guide, Workbook, and some useful tools here that you can use to self-drive its implementation and roll-out within your business.

2. The “Long Term” pathway integrates your strategic intent and long-term objectives and priorities building into your Annual and Quarterly plans to execute on.

Conclusion

Closing the execution gap between your business plan and reality is essential for achieving success. By setting clear priorities and expectations, using outcome measures and leading indicators, communicating regularly and effectively, and quickly surfacing and resolving issues, you can ensure that your plans translate into actual results. These tactics will help keep your team aligned and focused on what truly matters and set you up for long term success