What is the biggest cause of strategy failure?

You might have come across the following quote attributed to Morris Chang – the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – “Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is pointless.”

One of the main reasons a strategy fails in its execution is that it is not something you do alone! A classic approach in SMEs (of a certain size) is for the CEO to fabricate alone (or with a very small number of the leadership team) a strategy and push it forcefully through the whole organisation. This approach tends to create many hurdles and resistance from staff and key influencers (managers and team leaders) within the company which will threaten the success of implementing the strategy.

What to do?

Involving a diverse group of people from the organisation and at different leadership level is a good start. Bringing in an external ‘strategy facilitator’ who will neutrally conduct the discussions using a clear & proven methodology is another good step. That will guaranty some neutrality and will get everyone to embrace the logic and reasoning behind each key choice that will be made within the strategy. It will dramatically increase the chances of success of its implementation. Imagine the power of having key influential people within the organisation fully behind the strategy and each choice made! This will unleash action and momentum.

Thanks for reading.

Hervé Rolland – business coach – business mentor – strategy partner of SMEs

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