A Harvard Business Review survey conducted with more than 400 global CEOs found that executional excellence was the number one challenge heading a list of 80 issues which included innovation, geopolitical instability and top-line growth. The effect of a 5% shortfall in forecasted revenue would translate to an 18% shortfall in operating profits (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). Ambitious or clever strategies are not enough, successful execution depends on asking the difficult questions that challenge you and those around you.Read More
If your strategy and plans are well thought through, making sure that you have the right capabilities in place and the most appropriate structure, systems and processes, may seem like an easy next step. However, to get this right, perhaps some help would be useful? The answer/s are already in your organisation – so don’t let any benevolent management consultants convince you that only they have the answers. However, it may be useful for you to ask the right questions as you go through your ‘re-mobilisation’ planning, in the run up to post Covid-19. You have the answers, we have the questions.Read More
The success of strategies is dependent on three main factors – robustness, resilience and readiness. As the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, how will your strategy fare? Robust – how good are the assumptions you’ve made about markets, competitors, capabilities, costs, regulations and technology? Resilient – are the assumptions you made when the strategy was developed, still viable in a post-COVID-19 world? Ready – are your structures, processes, decision-making mechanisms, metrics and reward systems future-facing?Read More
Most companies have a strategy. Sometimes it’s formal and well documented, other times it’s informal, but well understood. So why do a lot a strategies fail in execution? Often it’s because companies take their strategies for granted and don’t always ask the tough questions before taking the plunge. These questions are particularly important at times when there is a major change of direction or when an unforeseen incident occurs. Now is the time to re-evaluate your strategy. How will it fare in a post-COVID-19 world?Read More
Under normal circumstances ensuring a strategy delivers as you hoped, planned and expected is tough enough; however when the world’s been turned upside down things just got a whole lot harder. Ensuring success in a post-COVID-19 world is dependent upon your leaders having the capabilities required for your strategy to be successful. As the competitive environment changes and the ‘new normal’ emerges, the capabilities required for success will also change. What are the skills, knowledge and expertise required of your leaders going forward, and what help is needed to make the transition?Read More
Does your strategy now require a major change in direction? The Covid-19 global pandemic has probably forced you to look at your current strategy and evaluate all of your previous assumptions. There are key components of your plans that will now need to change when you re-emerge from ‘lockdown’ and begin your ‘re-mobilisation’ plans. In the past, some of the best paid companies have failed, especially where their strategy requires a major change in direction. Most of the time this has happened because there wasn’t the right alignment in the business. Now is the time to review structures, processes, reward systems, culture and behaviours to ensure that you can execute your new strategy effectively.Read More
If even a small number of your key strategic assumptions don’t materialise, your strategy could become unsustainable. Does what looked feasible and achievable at the beginning of 2020, now seem dead in the water? Are you in shape to emerge from the crisis ready to beat off the competition and handle the adverse movement in costs? The combined effect of a 1% shortfall in market share (eg 19% vs 20%) and a 1% shortfall in gross margin (eg 44% vs 45%) would lead to a 5% reduction in revenue and 21% reduction in profits (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). It’s time to ‘stress-test’ your strategy to determine where are the gaps and weaknesses and what actions are needed to address themRead More
The disruption caused by COVID-19 has (or should have) resulted in Boards reviewing all aspects of their strategy and the way in which they operate. While senior teams may conclude they have the relevant logistics and processes in place which ensure the business can operate effectively in a post-pandemic world, what distinguishes an OK Board from a great Board are people and culture. Critical for high performing/effective boards is having the right people in the ‘room’ with the capabilities for taking the business forward underpinned by a culture which encourages respectful challenge and open dialogue.Read More
In an article published in Forbes magazine, research conducted by Jack Zender with 50,000 managers showed that poor leaders (bottom 10%) drove losses, good leaders (middle 80%) delivered profits and extraordinary leaders (top 10%) doubled profits. For a business with £100m revenues, this means good leaders can deliver £12m operating profits while extraordinary leaders can add another £10m (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). Now, more than ever, it’s important to understand the strengths, gaps and weaknesses amongst the people responsible for helping the business survive, stabilise and grow. Read More
As leaders of our businesses WE are held accountable for the delivery of our strategies. In both public and private sector organisations, it is the leaders who need to ensure the organisation is aligned to deliver its plans. So many strategies do not get delivered properly due to poor execution, shareholders, customers, employees and in fact all stakeholders must be very frustrated by the sheer waste of their money. Leaders have a great opportunity right now to begin their ‘re-mobilisation’ planning, and first must understand where the misalignments are going to be with structures, processes, systems and people as they come back to work. The planning can and should begin now.Read More
The continuing drive to embrace new technology and incorporate digital ways of working, is exciting. It is opening up new business opportunities as we seek to understand how AI, Robotics, AR (Augmented Reality) can help us to transform the way we do things. There is however fear – ‘’why are we so far behind everyone else’’ in our ‘digital transformation’ journey? Our advice to is ‘don’t panic’! Everyone we speak to and those we work with are all determining their own journeys. A key to embracing digitisation is not to forget your people and not to forget your organisations’ culture. Your employees need to be re-assured that you will help them acquire the ‘new’ capabilities as your organisation forges ahead. It is also essential to find ways to develop your organisation culture so that it will embrace these changes.Read More
If only part of a leader’s role is about helping their organisations and teams navigate through the turbulent waters of constant change, then right now, with white water swirling furiously around us all, great leadership is at its premium. If you are not looking at your strategy and working out how your business needs to re-align in order to accelerate out of the Covid-19 crisis, then you need to be. Now is surely the opportunity for you to begin your ‘re-mobilisation’ planning.Read More
Recent years have seen a surge of energy in organisations learning to pre-empt, understand and adapt to the challenges of the 4th industrial revolution. Critical to our role as business leaders is to understand the impact of Industry 4.0 in our respective markets and in this context know how to meet our customers’ changing business needs. During our Covid-19 re-mobilisation planning, as we search for ways to ensure that our business is aligned to our strategies, we need to ensure that our plans for the future take advantage of what we have learnt during the ‘lockdown’. Technology used well can help and be a real differentiator for everyone, enhancing ways of working, enabling communication and building collaborative, sustainable workforce solutions.Read More
I’ve known Rob Shorrick since he led a wide-ranging overhaul of personal and professional development at AXA PPP healthcare, where he was Group Learning and Development Director, making a massive impact on the organisation’s ability to handle innovation and transformation. Before the concepts became mainstream, he championed the benefits of self-managed learning and active alignment between the development needs of the organisation and the individual. Rob’s instinct is never to ask: “how can we get away with the minimum viable solution”. It’s always to push at boundaries and to embed a desire for continual radical improvement – even in organisations that, superficially, are coping on a day to day basis. Rob now runs a fascinating firm called the Leadership Gallery, and over the past few months I’ve been working with Rob and his colleagues on the development of a suite of proprietary diagnostic tools called Align+® which enable business leaders to identify the issues most likely to affect their ability to execute their strategies successfully. The tool is built upon data, ensuring leaders can make decisions driven by facts as...Read More
Published: 19th April 2018 Author: Anish Gupta, Director The Leadership Gallery recently conducted a survey of CEOs and C-Suite executives to understand how they viewed the implications of Brexit for their organisations. The results are in, and they provide an interesting insight into organisations’ priority areas of concern. The majority of respondents (74%) indicate they are already planning for the possible consequences of Brexit, and across the sample, about two thirds of respondents believe that Brexit will not pose a significant threat to their business strategy. While this sounds like a resounding vote of confidence in UK industry’s ability to deal with life after Brexit, a closer analysis of the responses shows there are sharp differences of opinion depending on sector. At a headline level, the UK appears to be confident that the threats posed by Brexit are not huge. However, this masks serious concerns within certain sectors. Let’s take a look at each of the issues polled separately. Threats to revenue 76% of respondents feel that threats to revenue are limited or not serious. However, in the finance and...Read More