Dr. Shekinah "Ki" Magee is the founder of Clear And Present Executive, LLC.
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Developing a clear strategic vision is vital in any organization—but vision will only take you so far. Implementation is where the rubber meets the road. Robust strategy execution transforms a strategic vision into tangible outcomes, contributing to your organization’s overall effectiveness and sustainability.
Most leaders know this, yet they often still struggle to bridge the gap between ideas and actions after a strategic offsite meeting. I believe successful strategy execution requires a game plan that incorporates accountability, timeliness, transparency, consistency and adaptability. This plan should start long before your offsite begins and extend for months after it ends. In my experience coaching leaders in high-performing organizations, the biggest strategy execution challenges are keeping a strategy alive and maintaining its momentum over time.
Best Practices For Creating An Effective Offsite
Whether they involve senior leaders or entire agencies, annual offsites are crucial for aligning teams, communicating overarching guidance and exploring changes and opportunities in the industry. They give you the chance to look back on the previous year, identify where you are today and outline objectives and milestones for the coming year. To maximize their impact, I recommend the following best practices.
• Ensure the right partners and stakeholders are present.
To make well-informed decisions, gather representatives from key departments and focus areas. If they will be involved in strategy execution, they should have a seat at the table.
• Facilitate discussions and activities that invite input.
Create an environment that encourages open dialogue and the exchange of ideas, as well as the identification of opportunities, innovations and roadblocks.
• Identify champions and foster cross-organizational collaboration.
Designate individuals from different teams to form cross-organizational work groups and designate a lead champion to help organize team members’ efforts to deliver key goals and objectives. The champion will be charged with reporting back regularly to leadership, and team members will be responsible for sharing and gathering feedback with their teams across the organization.
• Allot time for team building.
Offsites offer a key opportunity for executives and managers to get to know each other beyond their work functions. Incorporating team-building activities that align with the strategy focus will help strengthen relationships while reinforcing alignment on shared goals.
Best Practices For Keeping Up Momentum After An Offsite
From the day you finish the strategic offsite, the clock is ticking. Everyone in the organization knows top leaders went away for the day, and in the absence of information, rumors can prevail. Don’t overanalyze at the leadership level; spending too much time talking about the abstract means nobody is doing any real work planning and implementing the strategy itself.
• Share with the organization.
Present the results of the offsite in a leadership intent letter or an all-hands meeting within 60 days. Lay out your vision, introduce champions and their key goals and give people a forum where they can ask questions. Keep it simple and understandable.
• Keep strategy execution alive through cadence and synchronicity.
Establish a structure for participants at every level of the organization to regularly meet and provide updates. Develop a structured cadence for updates at various organizational levels: Quick 15- to 20-minute daily check-ins for those closest to the work, bi-weekly, 30- to 60-minute sync-up sessions for middle managers, monthly updates for senior leaders and champions and quarterly town halls or all-hands events for the whole organization. Presenters should focus on three questions:
1. What’s happened?
2. What does it mean? (What are the wins, or what can we learn?)
3. What’s next?
Share vision updates and deliverables through town halls and all-hands meetings, and acknowledge team members’ contributions publicly. Celebrate wins, and call out how your efforts have made an impact on the organization and people’s lives.
• Prioritize execution over excuses.
Transparency is crucial to maintaining credibility. If something didn’t work or didn’t get done, just say so. Don’t waste people’s time by making excuses for why something got off track. Describe the steps you are taking to address the issue, or explain why it is no longer a priority. Being open and honest will encourage engagement, trust and confidence within the organization.
• Be prepared to pivot.
Strategy is not static. The vision you outlined at the beginning of the year may change for a variety of reasons outside of your control. Build in processes to regularly review your strategy execution progress and be ready to adapt quickly when necessary. Staying flexible and responsive can help ensure your long-term success and sustainability.
Potential triggers for change include:
1. A consistent decline in core business performance (i.e., sales, market share or profitability).
2. A significant shift in customer needs, preferences or behaviors that are not addressed by the current strategy.
3. New laws, regulations or compliance requirements that affect your operations.
4. Feedback from customers, employees, investors or partners.
Strategic offsites are an opportunity for meaningful discussion and visioning. But the real work happens once you get back to the office. Keep up the momentum throughout strategy execution by staying engaged, open, flexible and collaborative every step of the way.
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