Life at the top is pretty tough for today’s business executives. Unfortunately, it is only going to get tougher. While the stock market continues to see positive trends, other indicators such as consumer confidence, the housing market and unemployment continue to present mixed signals. Customers, shareholders, employees and competitors are all placing greater demands upon your performance and that of your organization.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) issues a quarterly report called the “Single Most Important Problem” and it is no surprise that “poor sales” tops the list at 34%. The next most important problem is “taxes” at 19% and then “government regulation and red tape” at 11%. No other problems made it into double digits.

These “usual suspects” along with access to capital & credit and the rising cost of health insurance represent significant roadblocks to the success of your organization.

Short of political lobbying and other actions to leverage your collective business voice, many of these challenges are beyond our ability to directly influence. Case in point – even the Republicans in the House & Senate could not control the new healthcare legislation.

Business leaders should focus on the factors that they can directly control in order to strengthen their organizations. The four key actions that can best influence results are:

-Developing a clear plan.
-Executing the plan in a rigorous fashion.
-Building leadership capacity.
-Engaging the workforce.

Developing a Clear Plan

Too often, busy executives spend so much time in the day-to-day aspects of running the business that they fail to take time to work on their strategic business plan. You must have a clear path of where you are going and what it takes to get to your destination. Remember the old saying “If you don’t know where you’re going it does not matter what road you take.”

A clearly articulated plan that outlines your mission, vision and values will set the stage for business success. Other components of a typical strategic plan, such as marketing and sales objectives and financial forecasting will provide direction to the entire organization.

While a plan that looks out more than three years may not be realistic, a plan with a two or three year horizon is ideal. Each year the plan should be reviewed and the longer-term objectives should be modified to reflect the changes in the internal and external environments.

Executing the Plan

The importance of plan execution is highlighted by a quote from the book “Execution” by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan. “When companies fail to deliver on their promises, the most frequent explanation is that the CEO’s strategy was wrong. But the strategy itself is not often the cause. Strategies most often fail because they are not executed well.”

Execution of the strategic plan must be one of the core competencies of an organization. It requires a disciplined approach to achieving results and ensuring that accountability exists for each item within the strategic plan.

Another quote from Bossidy & Charan drives home the importance of this point. “Organizations don’t execute unless the right people, individually and collectively, focus on the right details at the right time.”

Building Leadership Capacity

The successful development of your strategic plan and its execution is directly linked to your leadership strength and that of your team’s. As an organization grows two important changes will occur.

First, it becomes difficult for the top executive to do everything needed for long-term success. You can’t be in all places at all times and you must be able to delegate and trust others to help manage and lead the organization.

Secondly, often the most skilled technically are those promoted to management positions. Overnight, these new managers go from highly skilled “doers” to inexperienced “leaders”.

Leadership is a skill set that can be learned. But good leadership does not just magically happen. A dedicated effort to building the skills of the leadership team is essential!

Engaging the Workforce

A recent Conference Board Survey indicates that employee engagement and job satisfaction has reached on all time low – 45% in 2009 down from 61% in 1987. Additionally, Right Management reports that 61% of more than 900 employees surveyed, indicate that they plan to look for a new position as soon as the economy improves in 2010.

In most cases, it will be your best performers who find new positions and leave. This can result in significant reductions in both productivity and the ability to provide excellent service to your customers.

The best ways to retain your top performers is to engage them in the success of your organization and help them grow within their positions. Those companies where employees understand the strategic direction and are involved in plan execution will be most successful in retention and enhancing productivity.

Conclusions

While business executives are facing enormous challenges in the near term, there is still significant opportunity to achieve breakthrough results. These four factors are all interrelated and if you focus on planning, executing, building leadership capacity and engaging your workforce, you can take control of your destiny.

Author Bio: Tony Rea is managing principal of 20/20 HR LLC based in suburban Chicago, IL. For more information visit http://www.2020hr.com

Category: Leadership
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