Our generation of leaders have been taught how to plan not how to implement. Every university offering a business degree has on their faculty a professor teaching strategy but almost none have a professor teaching its execution. This has left a skills gap among today’s leaders that heavily contributes to the downfall attempts to implement their strategy, resulting in loss of market and shareholder value. I call this the “Strategy Execution Skills Gap”. If too much emphasis is placed on strategy compared with execution by the leadership, then it leads to lower levels of performance because they become occupied with crafting it rather than executing it. High performance comes from striking the right balance between crafting strategy and executing it. Another key mistake we observe is that leaders habitually underestimate the implementation challenge. Because of the Strategy Execution Skills Gap they assume once they craft the strategy the hard work is done, Implementation requires the same commitment and drive that crafting the strategy requires.
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