Leading Your Organization to Success with a Strategic Plan

When it comes to business success, a strategic plan is vital and must span the entire organization, not a single team or department. The execution of a strategic plan involves a collaborative effort among different levels of an organization, including senior leaders, managers, and employees. The glue holding this process together is the organization’s values.

The number of teams and the individuals on those teams responsible for implementing the plan will depend on the organization's size, structure, and goals. For example, senior leaders may be responsible for establishing overall direction and setting goals, while managers may be responsible for developing action plans and delegating tasks to employees. Employees, in turn, may be responsible for carrying out specific actions and reporting on their progress.

With the right people and teams identified, internal communication is crucial for its successful execution, ensuring everyone is aligned, working towards the same goals, and promoting accountability and transparency throughout the organization. Effective communication can help ensure that everyone in the organization understands the plan, their role in it, and the impact their actions have on the organization's success. 

As a C-level executive, it's natural to have questions about who is leading your organization's strategic plan. You create your strategic plan, but when it comes to action, everyone looks at each other about who will do what, and everyone asks you what to do. Your teams keep coming to you with problems rather than solutions, and this creates a feeling of loneliness. Over time, we realized that being right can be lonely; we must start with baby steps and gradually build up the values that our teams will follow to execute the plan.

1-) Trust

Research from Google shows psychological safety is the most important element of top teams. Using your influence as the organizational lead, you control organizational buy-in on implementing the strategic plan. This buy-in is crucial and ensures that each tactic under the broader plan has the respect and support of everyone on the team. It is essential to involve your teams as much as possible in the solution at every stage. Let them have their fingerprints on the final product and not watch from the safety of the sidelines.

2-) Battling Ego & Personal Bias

An organization populated with individuals capable of checking their ego at the door and playing as a team increases the acceptance of the change. Successful teams realize that there are alternatives and approaches available to them outside of their typical ways of thinking, which drive their success and embrace the belief that "what got us here won't get us where we're going."

3-)The Importance of Innovation

The perception of innovation is different for everyone. Our three-phase COE-creation model highlights these differences. Some forms of innovation are natural extensions of existing efforts, while others push the brand into new markets. Regardless, every company needs the freedom to innovate spread across the company, not concentrated among certain roles or departments.  Look for individuals and groups that possess the required knowledge and skillset but also the willingness to collaborate even if their colleagues get the accolades. Finding these people in your organization is a challenge to even the best of companies, and often an outside consultant is helpful.

Final Thoughts

The success of a strategic plan in an organization depends on a collaborative effort among different levels of the organization, including senior leaders, managers, and employees. It is essential to involve the right people and teams and ensure effective internal communication to align everyone towards the same goals and promote accountability and transparency. Trust, battling ego and personal bias, and the importance of innovation are key elements for successful execution. As a C-level executive, involving teams as much as possible in the solution at every stage is crucial to ensuring organizational buy-in and support for implementing the plan. By following these guidelines, organizations can execute their strategic plans successfully and achieve their goals.