Executing with excellence.

Now is the time to see how far you've come

As we move into the final month of the year, many of us are in peak trading mode; our people are flat out keeping the wheels turning, the products moving, and the shelves full of stock. But for the leadership, most of what needs to be done has already been done, probably some time ago.

The big decisions have been made, the plans and resources put in place, it’s now down to the teams to execute, and it can be an anxious time, watching the results come in. Most of us at this point throw ourselves into two types of activity: getting out to see the operation, and watching what the competition are doing.

When your organisation is at full stretch, it’s a good time to see the problems under the surface, and spending time in the different parts of your operation can be a useful exercise in identifying things you can fix or improve in the new year. In the same way, when your competitors are in full flow, pulling out the stops to take that all important seasonal share, it’s a great time to see where you’re being chased, challenged and outgunned. Again, it gives you actions and ideas to pick up on, once the season has passed.

The problem is, a big slice of those fixes, actions and ideas, will never make it into reality.

That’s why there’s a third thing every leader should be doing at this point in the year, before either of the other two. Although the organisation is running at full steam, if you’ve planned it well, you should have a rare window to step back from the coal-face and survey the territory; to look how far you’ve come in the last year, what you’ve achieved and, more importantly, what you haven’t.

Every year at this time, we prove the maxim that a plan is only as good as its execution. The same is equally true for strategy; the difference is that it plays out over a much longer timeframe, and the implications of missing our milestones are slower to emerge and easier to ignore. When our trading position starts to slip in a peak period we react immediately, and if there are patterns of failure, we look for the underlying reasons and fix them. The same has to be true for your longer-term strategies and programmes.

Dig out your notes from last December. How many of the things you observed back then have you actually addressed – not just in part, but completely? How many of the initiatives you began in January to March have been delivered or are on track to achieve their aims? And how much of your strategy from back then has been progressed ahead of schedule, rather than being delayed or postponed until better times or better people come along to deliver them? Rate each one of those three areas on a scale of 1-10, from no progress at all, to delivery of everything beyond expectation.

In monthly or quarterly strategy updates and reviews, it’s easy to make the right decision at the time: to re-prioritise plans, move back some programmes and re-focus on others. But it’s essential that, at some point, you look back honestly and critically at the patterns of those decisions; the implications of those changes and delays; and question the effectiveness of your strategic delivery. It’s no more than you’d do if you discovered that your peak trading plans needed constant adjustment and re-prioritisation while they were being delivered.

So, on a scale of 3-10 (adding up your scores on those three areas), how good is your execution? Is it delivering at 100% or are you leaving 20%, 30% or more of your opportunity on the table?

And what does that tell you about the first actions that need to go on your New Year’s list?

Visiting your stores and logistics centres, shopping your competitors and new entrants, might make you feel more informed and prepared for next year’s showdown, but unless you have excellent execution through the rest of the year, you could well be wasting your time.