Touchdown or Touch Back? You Decide.
Thursday, 08 December 2011 09:48
We’ve all seen it. A week’s preparation. Hours of practice. A valiant drive into the red zone, only to be stalled on the two-yard line with seconds ticking away. It’s heart breaking for every football fan but it’s equally sad for a marketer. How many times has a carefully planned campaign been thwarted by last-minute failures? Bad coaching and poor play calling are often blamed but even with a winning playbook, proper execution is still needed.
A key to success with any major project is making sure each step is consistent with the mission throughout the process. If you’re preparing a mailing for high-end customers looking for luxury goods, don’t skimp on the gloss on the pictures. And, on the other hand, if you’re trying to reach price-conscious customers, sending out a heavy catalog with luxury brand names probably will not yield winning results.
Once the plan and consistent message are in place, the next crucial piece is execution. This phase is crucial because, not only does it directly affect the outcome of the project, but it also can point out flaws in your processes that were missed in the planning stage. For example, just like a place-kicker whose holder has hands of stone, the right people need to be in place. Is your project leader someone who will kick it through the uprights or someone like Lucy from “Peanuts,” who will pull the ball away at the last second?
Execution is a discipline, not an activity. As former GE executive Larry Bossidy writes in “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done:”
Here is the fundamental problem: people think of execution as the tactical side of the business, sometimes leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived “bigger” issues. This idea is completely wrong.
Execution is not just tactics—it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built into a company’s strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it. He cannot delegate its substance. Many business leaders spend vast amounts of time learning and promulgating the latest management techniques. But their failure to understand and practice execution negates the value of almost all they learn and preach.
Stephen Lynch, COO, Global Operations, at RESULTS.com, writing in The Economist:
Far too often, this plan fades from view when managers go back to being busy in the business with day-to-day operations and fire fighting. Strategic action priorities specified in the plan often get put on the back burner in favor of the urgent needs of the moment.
According to Harvard Business School professor Robert Kaplan, 90 percent of strategies fail due to poor execution. This is because companies execute their strategy in fits and starts, and few companies are good at aligning their current activities to their long term strategic priorities.
Lynch adds a key to success is to clearly monitor goals and objectives during the execution of project, rather than wait until then. Set up guidelines, checkpoints and milestones to measure whether you are really making progress toward the goal or if you will be forced to punt.
