Strategy: to Infinity and Beyond!

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

A. Einstein

Knowing means being familiar with something; the words, the facts of the strategy as is communicated from the leadership team. Understanding is the next step, a desired state when executing a strategy. Understanding the strategy is connecting the facts with a context, is applying this knowledge in different settings, with different people, in different situations. Better understanding of the strategy means better execution of what the strategy is supposed to bring to the organization.

But understanding is not enough if you want to excel. To achieve excellence in execution, all employees must not only understand the strategy, but have a strong belief that the strategy is the right one and have a robust confidence on the organization ability to execute it successfully. Employees must be committed to the success of the strategy.

As managers we have the responsibility to steer the boat towards this excellence, and often we do it by gut feeling and experience. Nothing against experience, quite the opposite, but wouldn’t it be nice to have some data on where we stand regarding the real team engagement of our strategy? Wouldn’t it be nice to better understand what is dragging the organization to help us to steer the boat more efficiently towards our goals?

Measuring the Strategic Engagement of the organization is one of the most undervalued tools that we can use to help achieving executional excellence.