Being better than every body else is not a strategy.

Strategy is making an integrated set of choices that positions you on a particular playing field with a way to win. – Roger Martin

He and A.G. Lafley authored Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. In the book, they outline five key choices:

1. What is our winning aspiration?

2. Where will we play?

3. How will we win?

4. What capabilities must be in place?

5. What management systems are required?

Moving from strategy to execution is a challenge.

We talk a lot about the so-called strategy execution gap here @gtmhub. Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes, and Charles Sull wrote a great article about this: Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It. (Link in comments.)

Their research revealed 5 common beliefs about implementing strategy that we get wrong.

1. Execution equals alignment.

   We're good with strategy up and down the hierarchy. We struggle with coordination across business units.

   “Only 9% of managers say they can rely on colleagues in other functions and units all the time, and just half say they can rely on them most of the time… When managers cannot rely on colleagues in other functions and units, they compensate with a host of dysfunctional behaviors that undermine execution”

2. Execution means sticking to the plan.
   Changing market conditions demand agility.

   “Companies also struggle to disinvest… Top executives devote a disproportionate amount of time and attention to businesses with limited upside and send in talented managers who often burn themselves out, trying to save businesses that should have been shut down or sold years earlier”

3. Communication equals understanding.

   Only half of middle managers can name any of their company's top five priorities. On top of that, they don't have a clear sense of how major priorities and initiatives fit together.

   “Not only are strategic objectives poorly-understood, but they seem unrelated to one another and disconnected from the overall strategy… Part of the problem is that executives measure communication in terms of inputs, rather than by the only metric that actually counts — how well key leaders understand what’s communicated”

4. A performance culture drives execution.

   Companies do not recognise or reward coordination enough.

   “The most pressing problem with many corporate cultures, however, is that they fail to foster the coordination that, as we’ve discussed, is essential to execution. Companies consistently get this wrong. When it comes to hires, promotions and non-financial recognition, past performance is two or three times more likely than a track record of collaboration to be rewarded”

5. Execution should be driven from the top

   Folks closest to a situation can respond the quickest and are best positioned to make the tough call, but senior leaders don't provide enough strategic clarity or support to help them make the decisions themselves

   “Frequent and direct intervention from on high encourages middle managers to escalate conflicts rather than resolve them, and over time they lose their ability to work things out with colleagues in other departments. Moreover, if top executives insist on making the important calls themselves, the diminish middle-managers’ decision making skills, initiative, and ownership of results”