Executing Business Strategy For Effective Management

Introduction
The transition from individual contributor to manager is very challenging. In addition to their technical knowledge, managers need tools and ideas to communicate strategies and develop their teams to execute them.

Successive execution of strategy requires successfully passing information and priorities through each level of the organization. Regardless of how critical they are, vision and strategy are of less use without consistent execution down to the front lines.

In this article, you will learn 5 steps to executing a business strategy for successful management.


Tips for Executing Business Strategy

1. Have Strategic Focus
One of the biggest challenges facing executive teams is a lack of strategic focus. As organizations grow, they bring with them the customers, products, services, and practices that got them to where they are.

It is highly critical for organizations to clarify their value propositions as one way of focusing attention on things that are strategically important. Organizations also need to take a close look at the current growth stages of their companies to reveal what practices have reached the point of diminishing returns..


2. Have a Priority
Setting priorities for tasks or projects that are important is essentially vital to executing effective strategies. A major challenge to executing effective strategy is failing to prioritize, or rather, trying to do everything.

As a result of demands from customers and stakeholders, it is tempting for executives to say “yes” to far too many initiatives and projects.


3. Develop Managers
Prepare and develop managers as strategy is being executed. Failure to prepare and develop managers as their roles shift can be a major cause of failure. As problems accumulate, unprepared managers are usually pulled down into the familiar and comfortable technical areas that got them promoted and don’t (or can’t) step up to less familiar roles of managing and leading.


4. Avoid Micromanaging and dumping
The ability to delegate tasks is a necessary skill for all managers. However, delegation isn’t all a manager is expected to do. As a manager, you must transcend simply assigning tasks to developing people. Otherwise, you will have the reputation of an assigner who dumps rather than delegate tasks to the team.

Consequently, your team will struggle to understand priorities or figure out which solutions to problems are acceptable. Micromanaging almost guarantees failure because the manager gets so bogged down in details that he or she fails to step up to the critical roles of translating strategy and developing others


5. Take Accountability
Fair and skillful management of accountability is critical to the successful execution of strategy. As a manager, you must ensure the strategy outlined is successful, and hold others accountable for it. But for a variety of reasons, holding others accountable may prove to be a difficult task. As much as having a personality that is engaging and warm is important in dealing with others, do not avoid the unpleasantness of confronting performance problems.


Conclusion
It is important for each individual to know where the organization is headed and what role they need to play in that journey. Yet, most of the time, the destination of the organization is unknown to the very people paddling its ship. Without an understanding of the market and organizational drivers of the strategy, the changes required of each individual can appear wrong.


















Source: MSBM
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