“Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless” Morris Chang

Many organizations the world over invest heavily in the process of strategic planning every year. Some organizations adopt a basic approach to strategic planning; others have become quite meticulous in this process. Outcomes of these strategic plans have been mixed, with many Shareholders and Executives expressing frustration over failure to achieve the desired results. In Zimbabwe the phenomenon of underachieving strategic plans is very pronounced in both the public and private sectors. Some business leaders have even gone to question the need for strategic planning itself. Is strategic planning important to organizational success? How should it be done? What’s the reason behind the low success rate of strategic plans and how can this be improved? These questions are even more pertinent now as it is strategic planning season in Zimbabwe as organizations are in the process of crafting and/or reviewing their strategies for the year 2018.

Strategic planning refers to a conscious and systematic leadership process of envisioning a desired future for an organization, translating this vision into SMART objectives and crafting a sequence of steps geared towards achieving these objectives. The outcome of this process is a strategic plan – a document that provides direction and guidance to an organization. There is a lot of preparatory work in terms of research, consultations, and reviews leading to the actual crafting of the strategic plan. An effective planning process is designed to harness all the wisdom, insights, experiences as well as the creative imaginations of the team. The completed strategic plan will only be as good as the process that led to its development.

A strategic plan is so important in every sphere of human life that it’s hard to imagine accomplishing anything without a strategic plan. A good strategic plan guides in resource allocation, activities to do, milestones to be achieved and the key indicators to be monitored – the execution matrix! The leadership has the responsibility of periodically crafting and reviewing the strategy in order to ensure sustainable performance. However strategy execution is everyone’s job as all employees assume their different roles in the implementation of the strategic plan.

Most companies commit the “leadership sin” of leaving the strategy process at the planning level. Many are guilty of thinking that the plan is in itself “the result” of the strategy process. Planning is only a part of the Strategic Management process. This has resulted in the paradox of “beautiful” strategic plans but with no commensurate strategic results. Many managers do not follow through the Strategic Management process to ensure that the outcomes identified in the strategic plan are realized.

According to research, 90% of strategic plans are not successfully executed. One of the major reasons is that more often than not execution is only an afterthought of the strategic planning process. This creates “the hanging strategy”– strategy document that is good on paper but has not been brought to life through execution. In the planning process, the leadership would have failed to design a mechanism for and putting in place conditions that enable the plan to be executed. In Zimbabwe many organizations are guilty of this “leadership sin”

For successful strategic management, leaders must put execution at the heart of the strategic planning process. A strategy is a new course of pursuit thus every strategy requires a different set of conditions for successful execution. Once the strategy has been agreed upon, mechanisms and conditions for successful implementation have to be put in place as part of the planning process. These include the organization structure, financial resources, skills, systems and culture. At this stage the leadership has to create the optimum conditions for the successful implementation of the strategic plan. Because execution is usually an afterthought, it’s done half-heartedly. This therefore results in a strategic plan that’s unimplementable–the hanging strategy!

According to the 7S model, once a strategy has been changed, this has an impact on the entire organization because the 7S’s in the model are mutually reinforcing. A change in one S requires a commensurate adjustment in the others. Therefore once Strategy has been changed, the mechanisms of and conditions for successful implementation should be synchronized, viz:

• Structure
• Systems
• Skills
• Staff
• Style
• Shared vision

This approach ensures that the total organization is considered as part of the strategic planning process. A review of all the organizational dimensions ensures that in each of those the organization has the necessary conditions and mechanisms directly informed and influenced by the strategic plan itself.

It is also important to synchronize the strategic planning process with the budgeting process. Experience has shown that a lack of alignment between the strategic plan and the budgets has contributed heavily towards the phenomenon of “the hanging strategy”. Most companies in Zimbabwe develop their annual budgets way before the strategic plans have been crafted. This creates a major problem in that the strategic planning process will identify key initiatives to be pursued yet these are not funded as budgeting would already have been concluded by the time the strategic plan is crafted. This then results in non-financial and other long-term strategic initiatives being pushed into the backseat with budgets and financial indices taking centre stage.

Lack of staff involvement also results in the “hanging strategy”. Although the planning is the prerogative of leadership, execution is everyone’s job. Leadership should invest more effort in distilling, communicating and selling the strategy in order to bring all staff on board. It’s only through detailed understanding that employees can become passionate and committed to the organization and its vision. Communication ensures that “the hanging strategy” is brought to life and it becomes a live strategy that everyone in the organization can relate to.

It is also imperative that in order to avoid a “hanging strategy”, a monitoring and evaluation mechanism also needs to be built into the strategic management process. This ensures that all the relevant stakeholders keep their “eye on the ball”, focusing on the key indices and driving towards the desired outcomes.

Organizations cannot talk of strategy without execution, neither can they talk of execution without strategy. Execution needs to be factored into the strategic planning process upfront, not as an afterthought. The “hanging strategy” is a result of poor strategic management. Effective strategic management ensures that the conditions and mechanisms for execution and put in place.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778