27 Oct Achieve Next Level Performance by Successfully Executing Your Strategy
Finding a growth strategy that works for you is absolutely vital for the survival of your business. Whether you’re trying to grow your business organically, or you’re focused on strategic growth through developing new markets, the key to ensure your business thrives is through the development of thoughtful strategies that build on your strengths. Often the best way to achieve these sorts of goals is through the development of quarterly plans that allow you to break down long-term aspirations into achievable short-term tasks.
However, a strategic quarterly plan is just a piece of paper unless you execute it. Coming up with the strategy isn’t difficult — it’s the execution that separates the successful businesses from the stagnant ones. Here is how you can execute your plan.
Keep It Simple
A big issue for many companies is that their plan is so detailed and complex, they have hard time getting started because they don’t know where to begin. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should scale down your plan, but it does mean that when you start acting, you should keep it as simple as possible. Identify the key element of your plan: what exactly you have to do for everything else to work. Focus on doing that and doing it well. Once you have achieved that, you can move on to the other aspects of the project.
Set Benchmarks and Always Be Measuring
A difficulty with executing a plan is that obvious progress can be slow — even the most well drafted strategy won’t get you new customers overnight. This is why benchmarking and measurement is necessary. By identifying Key Performance Indicators, you can not only ensure you are making progress towards your goals, but you can correct any issues earlier and get a sense of accomplishment that will help you keep executing your growth strategy.
Stay Focused
It is tempting to change course when you see a new opportunity. The challenge is to only divert attention when another option is so incredible, its potential clearly exceeds the current options. You need to let the big opportunities through, while you keep track of the less profitable plans in a way that doesn’t distract you. When initiating a quarterly plan, create a series of filters that will allow you to automatically sort through news. As discussed in a recent Inc. article, do the profitable time sensitive things, delegate or defer the not-so-profitable opportunities, and dump everything else.
Do you have any tips of your own? Share with me in the comments below.