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Stax Inc. believes many contemporary CEOs have understood the importance of crafting, articulating, and championing the strategic direction for their business. According to a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, a fifth of corporate level work time is spent on strategy development related initiatives. Given the significant investment in time and related resources, 70% of senior executives believe that their organisations can craft strategy with skill.
However, the problem arises when executing these strategies. Based on a global survey of corporate level leaders, it was revealed that 60% of corporate strategies are never implemented, and of those that are, two-thirds fail due to poor execution. This begs the question as to why most companies fail to successfully execute strategies.
Research suggests that there are three main reasons why businesses fail to translate their strategies into results. They are as follows.
Poor cross-organisational communication: Implementers on-the-ground are unaware of the strategic intent. Stemming from lack of clarity, as the core strategy is too high-level, making it difficult for rank and file employees to understand and relate.
Lack of leadership bandwidth and senior level support: Even though business leaders spend a fifth of their time on strategy development, nearly half of them spend less than 10 hours a month on reviewing implementation efforts.
Use of wrong measures: The KPIs most organisations drive after aren’t SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound, leading employees to think that these are unachievable. Collective accountability is also lacking. Companies are focused on few high-level outcome KPIs, rather than having the core KPIs cascaded down to all departments and different organisational layers.
Stax Inc. leverages global implementation expertise, along with a tried and tested proprietary framework to enable clients to drive towards strategic success. The focus of our approach is to follow a structured mechanism to manage the end-to-end implementation process, ensuring the achievement of core objectives in a sustainable manner. Our proprietary 5C framework is aimed at addressing the key implementation challenges faced by businesses.
Stax Inc. approach commences with a pulse check of the current ‘as-is’ situation to gauge likelihood of implementation success by comparing a client’s current setup to an optimal model. This identifies strengths, weaknesses and gaps within existing processes. This helps us identify areas to focus and improve during subsequent stages for sustainable strategic success.
For clients identified as having change management issues, Stax Inc. will provide support to effectively communicate their strategy across the organisation, ensuring the strategic intent is understood by all employees. Thereafter, it helps the client make the strategy relatable to rank and file employees by cascading it. This process is done by mapping the high-level initiatives into detailed activities and work streams, making it tangible while ensuring employee buy-in.
Stax Inc. also helps create cross-organisational collective accountability by introducing SMART KPIs at each organisational level, bridging the gap between high-level outcomes and specific work streams, while aligning it to everyone’s performance.
Finally, it enables clients to manage the end-to-end implementation process by tracking progress and evaluating performance against timelines and KPIs, while facilitating implementation and acting as a source of independent arbitration. Stax Inc. also helps setup implementation dashboards so that the board and senior management can have visibility of the entire process.
Given the substantial investment in time and money made by companies in crafting and articulating their strategy, it’s critical that they devote the same focus to protect that investment and ensure the realisation of those strategic outcomes. Stax Inc.’s expertise has enabled diversified conglomerates and companies in the banking, insurance, logistics and manufacturing fields to reap the benefit of their valued investment in terms of monetary figures and time.