Give new life to your plans: 5 tips for business leaders to turn strategy into execution

Over recent years, there has been a global rise in the number of startups, despite various challenges that business leaders have had to contend with, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and rising interest rates.

While a number of these ventures prove to be a success, others end up ceasing to exist just a few months later following heavy investment and countless hours of effort put in. This can also be the case for established companies looking to make a step in a completely new market or line of business.

The common problem across most of these failed ventures? An unsuccessful implementation of strategy.

While resources and strategy are integral for businesses, in order to both survive and succeed in the long term business leaders have to prioritise the formulation of a clear plan for the implementation of their strategies and ways to go about their business.

Therefore, here are five tips business leaders have to take note of in order to successfully turn a great strategy into tangible results.

1) Outline clear goals

Having a clear idea of the end-goals one wants to reach through the strategy is integral to the whole process.

Whether it is an ambitious goal aimed at planning for long-term success, or a more reasonable one that is focused on immediate implementation, business leaders have to start from the very core of their strategy: the reasoning behind it.

Business leaders need to outline the ‘what’ and ‘why’ that the strategy aims to answer, in order to ensure that the steps that they intend to undertake are the best means to achieving the results they want.

2) Break the strategy down into small chunks

Implementing strategies might seem like a tough and overwhelming task at first. However, this is no reason to give up.

Business leaders have to avoid attempting to tackle everything at once by instead of going all guns blazing right from the start, choosing to break their strategy down into manageable, shareable pieces with milestones for each.

They can then proceed to delegate these various tasks to each specific department of their organisation, in order to avoid having one team needlessly working on a project that another group of employees could accomplish more effectively.

Additionally, business leaders also need to prioritise which tasks have to be done first, second, and so on.

3) Develop realistic budgets and timelines

The implementation of key business strategies undoubtedly requires various resources. Failure to allocate a realistic budget and timeline could result in ending up with a missed opportunity.

It is important for business leaders to keep their budget in mind and to avoid straying too far from what their available resources can handle. If such a strategy requires particular capabilities that the existing team doesn’t possess, business leaders have to explore whether they can afford to spend more time trying to build that function from scratch, or else look for a more costly, yet quicker solution in outsourcing the problem to an expert.

Therefore, business leaders need to balance out their budget with an appropriate timeline, in order to allocate each according to how crucial a task is, thus helping them stay on track and ahead of their competition.

4) Be willing to adapt at points of failure

Whatever the strategy, it can always be susceptible to issues.

Business leaders have to be able to adapt according to the situation, as if something is not working, then they have to be flexible enough to try something else.

However, certain failures can be prevented by being extremely mindful of single points of failure. These are tiny details or flaws that can lead to a whole plan to completely stagnate or worse, fall apart.

Adequate preparation for the worst case scenario is a must, especially as it eases business leaders’ mind that if that particular situation does occur, the progress made will not be completely thrown out of the window.

5) Track progress

Once the implementation stage starts, business leaders need to continue monitoring the progress made against the strategy that they had sketched out at the start.

This will enable them to identify any potential issues very early on, paving the way to make any necessary changes to the strategy.

Successfully tracking progress will also allow everyone to remain focused and motivated to complete the tasks at hand.