Focus on Less to Achieve More

Have you ever been truly bad at something? Like failed way more than you succeeded? I have those moments. Dancing is mine. But the thing is, I know I’m bad at dancing. But there’s a peculiar part of our professional lives where we are universally terrible but somehow collectively convinced we're brilliant. I’m talking about strategy execution.

Strategy is an over-utilized concept, and in my experience, very few truly understand its meaning. Most leaders would never admit that. Maybe it was fate, or just a series of questionable career choices, but I’ve ended up deeply embedded in this world. I'm Johan, and I've dedicated my life to the pursuit of excellence in strategy execution. With more hours invested than I'd care to admit, I've spent my career as a Management Consultant and Chief Strategy Officer, cutting through the fluff to uncover the real secrets behind exceptional execution and large-scale change.

Let’s begin by stating our problem. For strategy, the problem is rarely a lack of good ideas; it’s the inability to turn those ideas into reality. Nine out of ten strategic initiatives fail to reach their objectives on time[1]. Companies deliver, on average, only 63% of promised financial outcomes[2]. This execution gap leads to a global loss of roughly $1 million every 20 seconds[3]. This has tangible consequences, including our continued inability to tackle global societal challenges effectively and, ultimately, the potential downfall of our civilization. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but let’s at least recognize that we could do better.

I believe that we stand at a pivotal moment. The rate of change is ever-increasing, and the problems of our inability to successfully execute is therefore increasingly problematic. We become passive observers, beat down by the relentlessness of it all. So, we can either accept the status quo and continue as passengers through these eventful times, or we can do something about it. In this short article I would like to challenge you to critically assess your own ability to execute strategy. For those who dare - I invite you to join the Execution Revolution.

Recognizing the Problems Behind Your Problem

After years of studying and applying various methodologies, I noticed three main issues consistently emerging as the primary culprits behind poor outcomes. First and foremost is your ability to prioritize. In the drive for success organizations often scatters their focus, chasing every shiny new opportunity. Limited resources mean you can't pursue every goal effectively. Each chosen project comes at the expense of another; every minute spent on one task is a minute withheld from a potentially more impactful activity. Ironically, focusing on less achieves more.

Second is the inability to align around your goals, through the hierarchies[4]. If everyone is rowing in different directions, you’ll make the wrong kind of waves. Understanding of a company's strategy diminishes as you move down the hierarchy. Fewer, clearer goals make it easier to align everyone, top to bottom.

Finally, a more technical but equally critical point: the steering systems most companies use are not efficient in driving change. My own definition of strategy execution has emerged as driving behavior change at scale. As part of that, you will need to handle resistance. This is what gets strategies killed in the real world. Contrary to popular belief, the issue isn’t a widespread lack of engagement at lower levels. It's simpler than that.

The greatest challenge in strategy execution is the relentless pull of daily operations, consistently sidelining long-term goals. Immediate tasks and urgencies push strategic tasks to the perpetual 'next week,' undermining the organization's ability to achieve its most important goals. Without a mechanism to counteract this force, pivotal improvements are perpetually deferred in favor of more pressing, but often less impactful, day-to-day demands.

A Revolutionary Recipe

Strategy and execution are two sides of the same coin, each meaningless without the other. In this article, my ambition is to give you the cheat code for a streamlined and potent methodology for successful strategy execution. It consists of just four easy-to-grasp components. Think of it as the minimalist’s guide to not messing things up.

The first two components, Most Important Goals (MIGs) and Strategic Initiatives, form the strategic part of our methodology. They answer the questions of WHAT you aim to achieve and HOW you aim to achieve it.

Most Important Goals (MIGs)

Exceptional execution begins with narrowing the focus. You can't be everywhere at once. This discipline starts with the top team designating two to three Most Important Goals. Any more and you’ll decrease your chance of success drastically. Each subsequent team then identifies 2-3 goals that support the team above. This creates a streamlined set of goals across the company, ensuring each team has the right focus to make progress without losing alignment.

Strategic Initiatives enable your focused goals with the most efficient and effective tactics. These initiatives represent the 'big bets' that can drasticly change a company's direction towards the future and significantly influence its financial performance. To be successful, they need to go beyond incremental improvements, which typically only maintain the status quo. These initiatives - the company’s biggest moves - accounts for 45 percent of a company’s performance[5].

Strategic Initiatives serve as actionable pathways designed to realize MIGs and illustrate HOW we plan to achieve our objectives. They provide a transparent growth roadmap, pinpointing sources of performance enhancement. These initiatives make the strategy understandable for everyone, concentrating efforts and clarifying the rationale behind your strategic direction.

The third and fourth components, Key Activities and Strategy Stand-Ups, form the execution part of the methodology. They answer the questions of what you DO to focus your efforts and how you sustain change and maintain momentum over time.

Key Activities are about identifying your high-impact actions. It's based on the principle that a small number of activities will drive the majority of your results. It's essential to identify these high-leverage activities and focus your efforts there.

Achieving significant goals isn't just about measuring the outcome; it's about zeroing in on the crucial activities that propel us toward these goals. The essence of success in any endeavor, like diet and exercise in personal fitness, lies in focusing on controllable, impactful actions. Many organizations lose sight of this, entangled in the allure of the end goal without anchoring their efforts in the activities that lead there.

Key Activities offer a way to focus efforts and resources where they are most needed, providing clear direction on pivotal actions for the team and the organization. However, this isn’t about micromanaging every minor task. That approach is impractical and counterproductive. Instead, teams should pinpoint a select number of impactful actions aligned with overarching company goals and initiatives.

These Key Activities then serve as the foundation for steering the team's efforts and monitoring their progress toward strategic success. Activity-based steering aligns daily efforts with strategic imperatives. Each team member gains a clear understanding of their role in the grand scheme, threading their day-to-day actions with the company's strategic goals.

Strategy Stand-Ups

Strategy Stand-Ups are about fostering a culture of commitment and driving real change. It's a team process that highlights successes and failures, enabling course correction and continuous improvement. These meetings create a rhythm of accountability and progress, steering the organization toward its Most Important Goals.

Strategy Stand-Ups are short, weekly meetings (15-30 minutes). These meetings focus exclusively on progress toward the team's MIGs, emphasizing the Key Activities. The structure of Strategy Stand-Ups encourages transparency, accountability, and a shared commitment to collective goals.

Although it might seem as a standard weekly check-in – it’s not. Remember when we discussed how the relentless pull of operational tasks was one of the primary culprits behind poor execution. These meetings sidestep operations, cutting to the heart of where the true value is created. They serve as a sanctuary from daily chaos, a dedicated time to focus solely on actions that drive strategic milestones.

Moving Strategy Execution into the 21st Century

One of the difficulties of strategy is how we manage it systematically. Ninety-five percent of the tools we use are still PowerPoint and Excel[6]. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of systems automation for operational tasks, but when it comes to strategic clarity, the tools are remarkably analog. This poses a significant stumbling block.

For CEOs, it’s incredibly hard to cut through the organizational layers, understand the true progress behind the beautiful slides and get the correct information when it’s needed. From the team's perspective, the messages from above are often incoherent and conflicting, not to mention that it’s incredibly time-consuming to compile the strategy status reports.

At the core, the problem lies in scaling strategy effectively. Digital tools for strategy execution represent a paradigm shift from traditional, analog methods to a dynamic, interactive approach. These tools enable organizations to quickly roll out strategic changes, maintain alignment across all levels, and actively steer towards goals rather than merely monitoring progress through backward-looking metrics. Unlike static presentations or spreadsheets, digital platforms offer real-time updates, collaborative features, and the ability to adjust tactics promptly based on current performance.

These tools offer a way to raise your organizational ability to stay ahead of the constant disruptions, and enable you to react and reprioritize within your strategy. Their potential, however, remains limited by the digital maturity within the C-suite. The cost of lagging is high and the level in many senior teams is just too low[7]. It's not necessary to master every new gadget or app, but you do need to understand how digital tools can amplify your strategy by giving it scalability. If you're dragging your feet on this, wake up. The longer you resist, the harder it will be to catch up. And believe me, catching up is a hell of a lot harder than keeping pace.

Ending Thoughts

Just kidding, this is just the start, not the finish line. Now, you’ve got to ask yourself: Are you actually going to act on what you’ve learned, or just nod along and do nothing? Don’t be that leader.

Take an honest look at your current practices. If you’re hesitant to admit there’s a problem, you’re already behind.

Got a team? Great. Hand them copies of this article and dive in. Commit to the four concepts - Most Important Goals, Strategic Initiatives, Key Activities, Strategy Stand-Ups. Cherry-picking the easy stuff won’t cut it. Focus on less to achieve more isn’t just catchy; it’s the way forward.

The point of calling this an Execution Revolution is that strategy relies on the voluntary contribution of your entire organization. No matter who you are, you can’t execute it alone. By implementing the straightforward methodology outlined in this article, you have the opportunity to drive meaningful change and position yourself as a leader of tomorrow, adept at navigating and thriving in our dynamic world.

This is an investment in yourself, yours and our collective future. The more who join this crusade for change, the stronger our impact will be. Step up, take charge, and lead the way. Join the Execution Revolution and let's transform our world together.

[1] Intellibridge. ”90 Percent of Organizations Fail to Execute Their Strategies Successfully" IntelliBridge. https://www.intellibridge.us/90-percent-of-organizations-fail-to-execute-their-strategies-successfully/

[2] Mankins, Michael C., and Richard Steele. "Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance" Harvard Business Review, July 2005. https://hbr.org/2005/07/turning-great-strategy-into-great-performance

[3] [3] Project Management Institute. "Pulse of the Profession 2018" PMI.org. 2018. https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/about/press-media/press-release/pulse-of-the-profession-2018-media-release.pdf

[4] Birkinshaw, Julian, and Jordan Cohen. "No One Knows Your Strategy — Not Even Your Top Leaders" MIT Sloan Management Review. February 24, 2015. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/no-one-knows-your-strategy-not-even-your-top-leaders/

[5] Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.

[6] Accenture. "CEOs Identify Combination of Data, Technology, and People as Future Growth Driver, Yet Only 5 Percent of Organizations Realizing Its Value" Newsroom, 2023. https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2023/ceos-identify-combination-of-data-technology-and-people-as-future-growth-driver-yet-only-5-percent-of-organizations-realizing-its-value

[7] Kane, Gerald C., et al. "Does Your C-Suite Have Enough Digital Smarts?" MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/does-your-c-suite-have-enough-digital-smarts/