From strategy to execution
What differentiates companies and teams who are able to follow their plans from those who aren’t
While managers, leaders, and executives constantly push for strategic and tactical initiatives — including new projects, changes in structure, or any other action — these plans rarely meet their timeline, and often aren’t executed at all.
Companies that execute according to their strategy grow faster and their team members maintain higher levels of engagement and satisfaction, while delays cause frustration, misalignment, and stall companies’ progress.
So how come a significant number of teams — across diverse departments and organizations — still get pulled off from their plans? What differentiates those that are able to fulfill their strategy from the rest?
Reasons for not delivering according to plan/strategy:
Lack of visibility to what’s actually happening — We found that managers think they know what their teams are working on but they don’t understand the extent of resources that are being allocated per project/task. This lack of visibility results in misallocation of resources where the most important projects are under prioritized
Basic tracking — Many companies today use one of a handful project management tools. This space is crowded with solutions. Some aim to be a tool for general project management needs, while others focus on needs that are unique to certain departments in the organization. While these tools have proven their effectiveness in grasping main milestones, they are still dependent on human involvement. A team member needs to move a certain project from point A to point B which might be subjective and therefore inaccurate. In addition, the project management tools are lacking visibility to what’s happening between milestones, why they are delayed, etc.
Side project distractions — New customer requests, bugs in the product, technical difficulties, or any other distractions, are common side effects that most companies need to act upon. Ignoring a bug or an urgent request from a customer isn’t often a viable option — and those tend to pull in tremendous amounts of resources while disregarding other key projects that should progress simultaneously.
Key stakeholders and internal dependencies — Nowadays, more than ever, companies face frequent changes in their human capital. Growth on one hand, brings new employees at a rapid pace, while on the other hand, the Great Resignation era brings unprecedented offboarding of employees. These two trends cause managers to spend significant amounts of time on ramp-ups and transferring knowledge instead of executing according to plan and focusing on the most important topics.
Key differentiators of successful executional companies
Akooda offers tools that tackle the above challenges, which could be embraced by successful and forward thinking managers and companies. Let’s take a look at a few below –
Internal “X ray” — not only knowing what teams and departments are working on, but also understanding the volume that is actually being allocated per item, can help managers and executives guarantee that the topics that are needle movers get the proper attention. This also helps in hedging any potential distractions and limiting it by volume, per employee, and by time allocation.
Data driven approach that doesn’t include human interaction — the amount of software products that companies use, is growing over time and is expected to continue and grow. These tools include communication tools (e.g. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom), project management applications (e.g. Asana, Trello, Monday), knowledge base tools (e.g. G-Suite, OneDrive, Github), CRM tools (Salesforce, Hubspot), and more. Successful companies understand the massive potential of data that is being pulled automatically without interpretations or human involvement from these wide range of tools. This data can portray a more accurate picture of what’s happening internally and externally in the organization and it enables decision makers to grasp an objective understanding of projects and timelines, and react accordingly.
How Akooda’s hands free algorithm works
Multidimensional communication flows — hierarchy is one important dimension of how organizations operate. It includes the relationships between managers and employees and gives the basic understanding on the org structure. However, other dimensions such as collaboration between certain stakeholders that isn’t related to org charts, employee expertise on a certain topic, and more, are left uncovered. Organizations that are able to grasp other dimensions including internal and external communication, can smoothen onboarding and offboarding of employees, save significant time, and increase productivity.
Results, implications, and recommendations
As explained, executing as planned has diverse implications across the organization. It can create a competitive edge or minimize product gaps, reduce significant costs by focusing on needle movers projects, and increase employee engagement. While there is a consensus regarding the desired outcome, the vast majority of tools to support this vision, either exist in a suboptimal way or don’t exist at all. Akooda is the only Operations Intelligence software that grasps companies internal and external interactions, brings digestible insights to its customers, and its all done without human intervention in the process. It’s basically Google Analytics to your internal organization.
