Have you ever seen two companies in the same industry offering similar products, but one fails? Do you wonder why Facebook made it, but Myspace didn’t? A company can have the best strategy in the world, but if they don’t operationalize it, it’s not worth the paper on which it’s printed. The failure to implement, or implementing poorly, is known as the strategy-to-execution gap. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur, small startup, a large company, or a non-profit, successful organizations know how to go from strategy to tactical execution. 

What Strategy Is and Is Not

Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, considered one of the world’s premier strategy thought leaders describes it as “making choices and trade-offs; about deliberately choosing to be different” based on three principles. One, a strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position with diverse activities. Two, it requires making choices about what not to do. Three, it should create a fit between all of the organization’s activities (Porter M., 1996). 

Ask yourself this, what you want to be better at than anyone in the world? Determine what you need to get there, create a plan, then execute the plan. Anything that doesn’t directly support the plan is a ‘no.’ Where some companies go wrong is creating a list of activities and calling it a strategic plan. Or they will create operational excellence as a competitive advantage, but that’s easy to replicate. The biggest single mistake when it comes to strategy is not having one; the second biggest is not implementing one if you have it. These are the five actions you can take to close the gap.

#1 – Get Clear About Your Mission and Vision

One of the most challenging concepts for people to grasp and integrate is mission versus vision. A mission explains why you exist while a vision describes your desired end state. Consider JFK’s 1961 address to Congress, where he outlined his directive for the mission to the moon. First, a man needed to land on the moon within the decade. Second, space exploration was imperative for the survival of the country and humanity. Third, the US, though not the first into space, needed to rise as a global leader in space exploration.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Lewis Carroll.

Think about Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech as an example of vision. He didn’t lay out a specific direction. Instead, he described the desired end state. First, no one will be “judged by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character.” Second, “little black boys and girls will join hands with little white boys and girls.” Third, every “valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain made low.” And fourth, that blacks will be “free at last.” A vision statement should lay out a statement of values people can identify with and be a little bit scary, often referred to as a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal).

Action Step: Write down your reasons for starting the business to understand your why—use it to craft a mission and vision statement. Be patient with yourself because it can take a while to capture it succinctly. Your mission statement can be anywhere from one to seven sentences long. For your vision statement, stick to two to three sentences. 

#2 – Determine Your Unique Value Proposition

Start by asking yourself, what do you want to be better at than anyone in the world? Why should a potential customer buy from you versus your competitor? Myspace and Facebook were both social platforms used to connect people. One grew into a billion-dollar business while the other, well, you know. While Facebook started as something to do, Mark Zuckerberg quickly saw the value of the social platform not only to connect people but to drive revenue through ads. It collects massive amounts of data on its users and is a gateway to other platforms when people use their Facebook credentials to log in. 

To understand what sets you apart, study the consumer. By getting a clear understanding of their pain points, you can design a better product experience. You can identify the unmet needs by examining the competitive landscape. In the case of Facebook, the users aren’t the customers. The companies who pay to get in front of users are the customers. One could argue that the users are the product, not the platform.

In the case of Facebook, the users aren’t the customers. The companies who pay to get in front of users are the customers. One could argue that the users are the product, not the platform.

Action Step: Conduct an analysis of the competitive landscape and identify your target customer. This data will allow you to discover the unmet needs in the market. Also look at trends to inform the viability of your product. Decide what you want to be better at than anyone in the world; this is your unique value proposition. Also, consider the standard way of doing things or doing nothing at all as competition. 

#3 – Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Now that you know where you’re going, you need to figure out get there. But first, you need to know where you currently are by conducting a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. Strengths and weaknesses refer to what you control internally. Opportunities and threats are external factors that may impact your business. 

A SWOT analysis will help you identify your current capabilities and gaps. It will also reveal anything on the horizon you can leverage to accelerate your results or an eventuality for which you should prepare. An example of this is microchip credit cards. The Federal Government announced years in advance that banks would be required to issue credit and debit cards with chips in them. A successful bank that was tracking the identity theft trend would have guessed the US would require this change because it was already available in Europe. So the bank was likely already providing this technology to its European customers. Point of Sale providers such as Square and PayPal had time to create a product, but it was probably already in the pipeline, given the trend toward privacy and security. To us, the consumer, it seemed as if everything happened overnight. For the providers, it was years in the making. An unsuccessful bank would have been caught off guard by this change in requirements. 

Banks had to forecast a change in operating costs to ramp up manufacturing and distribution of microchip cards. Square had to develop the technology and create manufacturing lines, market, and distribute the product. To accomplish this transition, banks and point of sale providers had to identify their current skill and capability gaps, then fill them. 

Action Step: Survey your current customer base and employees to get a sense of what you do well and where you need to improve. Don’t have customers or employees yet? Look at reviews for similar companies to what people are saying. Visit places such as Reddit to get people’s thoughts on a company or specific service. A great place to search is product support forums where people list features they wish a particular product had. Use information gathered from your research to inform a SWOT analysis. 

#4 – Create a Plan and Work The Plan

After compiling all of your information, it’s time to go to work. This step is where many organizations and businesses go astray. They spend so much time on the strategy and neglect to be equally as thoughtful with the planning. 

First, you must set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals. I know this one seems obvious, but some people don’t set goals at all. I worked with the founder of a startup whose goal was to make money so they could retire. That was their whole goal, and they struggled to build a successful company. The goals must align with the strategy.

Second, determine your metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This information will indicate if you’re going down the right path or headed toward disaster. Review your metrics consistently. Depending on your business, you should have daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly metrics and KPIs. Create a dashboard to access this information quickly. The dashboard, or balanced scorecard, should only contain a handful of KPIs that indicate the health of your business, the impact of your efforts, and your performance-to-target. 

Third, do the work. Use feedback from the metrics to make adjustments as necessary. But frankly, the secret to closing the strategy-to-execution gap is to plan the work and do the work. 

#5 – Be A Futurist

What will ultimately set you apart from the competition is being a futurist by either identifying trends or creating them. Consider the evolution of the iPod to the iPhone. It wasn’t an accident. From the time the original iPod hit the market, there was a development pipeline in place for the iPhone. The exact design may not have been conceived yet, but the end goal was the smartphone. And Apple’s pipeline continues to evolve. 

The point is that once your product is on the market, no matter what it is, you must be looking for what’s next. The internet changed the game on learning, coaching, and training. YouTube and Instagram have made it possible for anyone to become an influencer or celebrity. What is on the horizon that can either propel your business or sink it (if you’re not ready)?

Action Step: Every quarter, ask yourself what’s next and set aside a week to research your industry. Revisit the review sites and support forums to get a sense of what customers are craving. Subscribe to newsletters such as Harvard Business Review or those from the major consulting firms such as McKinsey, who publish thought pieces daily.

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