Batanai Kamunyaru
Most business leaders like to think that they are exempted from the details of running the organisation. What a way of viewing leadership? As a leader, yes, you stand on the mountaintop, inspire your people with vision and think strategically for the continuation of the business, but you do not divorce yourself from conducting the operations.
Things only get done in an organisation if the leader’s heart and soul are engrossed in the business. No leader will run an organisation successfully if he fails to pick other leaders who have the company’s DNA, set the business’ strategic direction and conduct the business operations. Just imagine how good the football teams in the Premier League would be if the manager or coach spent all his time in the office making deals for transfer in and transfer out of players, and delegate the actual coaching to the team captain or the assistant! Obviously, the team will perform poorly and may even get relegated. However, in other companies, the relegation is shut down or a significant market share loss.
There are certain tough questions that only the business leader can ask, and everyone must give answers that are truthful. Having asked the tough questions, then the leader must manage the process of discussing the information received and make the right trade-offs. All this can only be achieved if the leader is intimately immersed in the business and knows enough to have the all-inclusive view and ask the tough insightful questions. How the leader engages with people within the organisation determines how well the organisation will function.
It is of importance that business executives understand that there is a huge difference between leading an organisation and presiding over it. Most of the organisations in our nation lacks leadership, hence the reason the nation’s industry is in shambles. The leader who vaunts of a hands-off approach is surely boasting about destroying the business. If you are hands-off, who is confronting the people responsible for poor performance? Who is inquiring about problems to solve and ensure that the problems get solved? As a leader, if you are not hands-on, then you are presiding over the organisation and you are doing less than half of your work.
When dialogue is not the core of the organisation’s culture and the basic fabric of work, then that’s a guarantee that the organisation’s going concern is compromised. Being hands-on does not mean that you must micromanage or disempower people, but it’s about active involvement in the issues of the business and do what the leader should be doing. The leader who implements builds a culture of execution within the organisation and everyone will pull towards execution. A culture and processes for execution must be put in place and promote people who gets things done more quickly – giving them more responsibilities. Jack Welch is celebrated for his success at General Electric, due to his intimate and intense involvement with the people and the operations. He found it easier to connect because he knew the realities of his organisation and talked about them. He was knowledgeable about the business’ details. He was excited about what he was doing. He was driven about getting results. His inspiration to the people was not through exhortation or speechmaking, but by the example he set. What examples are you setting in your organisation? If the people under you are not performing, be certain that you are the one who set such an example. When the performance of the business is poor, look no further for answers, but yourself. Leaders in any organisation, get the behaviour they exhibit and tolerate. Therefore, you change the culture within the business by changing the behaviour of its leaders!
For good strategy execution, look at the gaps between the desired outcome, as set during the strategy sessions, and the actual outcome. The outcome should be looked at from all angles thus from profit margins to even the selection of people for promotions. Once you note the gaps, move to close the gaps and raise the benchmarks higher across the whole organisation.
Several times, the challenge for execution is in getting to the pith of an issue through persistent and constructive probing. There is no openness, as issues are hidden, and no-one is willing to bring them to the attention of the ones with the power to solve them. For example, in strategy sessions, sales managers agree to a ten percent sales increase in the coming year, even though the market conditions are not in support of such, without debate or discussion. The leaders are not asking the hard questions like, where will the increase come from? What products will generate the growth? What new customers are going to be added to push the increase? How are the competitors going to react? What milestones are going to be put in place? You measure performance through the milestones you would have put in place. If the first quarter milestones are not reached by the end of the quarter, it is an amber robot which shows you that things are not going as planned, and there is need to change something to bring performance back to line.
For the strategy to be executed well, check to see if the right people are in charge to get it done. The people should be those who are self-motivated to achieve good results through following the steps of the strategy. Accountability must be made very clear, and no-one should be left guessing as to who is accountable and who is not! It is possible that for some milestones to be reached, there must be collaboration, therefore understand whose collaboration will be required, and how are you going to motivate them to collaborate? Sometimes, you must relook at the reward system to ensure that the accountable people are motivated to achieve the common objective. It is difficult for an organisation to execute unless the right people, collectively and individually, pay attention to the right details at the right time.
The downfall of many leaders is due to failure to execute, and to win, the leader would have to involve all the people responsible for the strategic plan’s outcome. When the people come up with the strategic plan, they must also provide the how’s of executing the plan specifically. The plan is worthless if it does not have the hows of execution.
There are ways that a leader who is concerned about execution should follow, to keep himself from micromanaging and being caught up in the details of running the business. Some of the things that a leader can do include;
- Understand the people and the business: a personal connection with the people will help you build an intuitive feel of the business and the people will view you as a caring person and they will personalise the mission you will be asking them to perform.
- Set clear goals and priorities: leaders who execute should focus on three or four priorities that produce the best results with the available resources and the priorities should be grasped by everyone in the organisation.
- Face reality: Several leaders tend to overstate their strengths and underestimate their weaknesses. Be realistic to yourself and make it a priority to be real always. View things as they are and shape them to be what you want!
- Develop your people’s capabilities: A good leader will develop his people through coaching and mentoring. Everyone has potential in something, therefore identify that something and make effort to perfect it so that the organisation becomes better. Never worry about people leaving you after you have developed them, give them a reason to stay. Any organisation that does not put emphasis on expanding its people’s capabilities is headed for a crash! However, there are leaders who are emotionally weak, and they avoid developing people for fear that they will challenge their power. So, their tendency is to protect their faint authority. Sooner or later, such emotional weaknesses will destroy both the organisation and the leader.
- Reward the doers: Whenever you want people to stay with you after you have developed them and to produce specific results, you must reward them accordingly. Mostly, organisations make the mistake of not distinguishing those who achieve results and those who don’t, especially in basic pay and bonuses. If the nonperformers are rewarded the same as the performers, the performers will eventually become non-performers, making the organisation a non-performing entity.
Several companies fail to achieve their strategic goals even though they would have put action plans in place, this is so as the leaders are divorced from execution. The behaviour of the leaders is that of not executing, and everyone else inherits such a culture. To win with strategy, EXECUTION must be a priority! In the words of Morris Chang, “Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless.”
