Does the thought of prepar­ing your an­nu­al busi­ness plan fill your lead­er­ship team with dread?

For many busi­ness­es it does. Long be­fore the first strat­e­gy ses­sion be­gins, lead­ers are al­ready an­tic­i­pat­ing the frus­tra­tion of in­vest­ing weeks in plan­ning, on­ly to watch ex­e­cu­tion stall months lat­er. The fear of wast­ed ef­fort is so re­al, that some teams ap­proach the plan­ning process ex­pect­ing dis­ap­point­ment, rather than suc­cess.

This re­al­i­ty should con­cern every leader. Too many busi­ness­es have nor­malised fail­ure in ex­e­cu­tion. They com­plete an­nu­al plans, ap­prove bud­gets, hold launch meet­ings and then qui­et­ly ac­cept that many pri­or­i­ties will nev­er be achieved. Some­where along the way, chron­ic un­der­per­for­mance be­comes ac­cept­ed as busi­ness as usu­al.

I be­lieve that it’s time to chal­lenge that as­sump­tion. Busi­ness plans do not have to be­come ex­pen­sive doc­u­ments that gath­er dust. Ex­e­cu­tion fail­ure is rarely a mys­tery. In most cas­es the warn­ing signs are vis­i­ble long be­fore the plan is launched. The busi­ness­es that con­sis­tent­ly achieve re­sults are not lucky. They are de­lib­er­ate. They iden­ti­fy their ex­e­cu­tion bar­ri­ers ear­ly and take ac­tion be­fore those bar­ri­ers be­come per­ma­nent road­blocks.

The first step is a sim­ple but pow­er­ful de­ci­sion. Lead­er­ship teams must de­cide that ex­e­cu­tion suc­cess will no longer be left to chance. The same en­er­gy in­vest­ed in cre­at­ing the busi­ness plan, must be in­vest­ed in cre­at­ing a lead­er­ship strat­e­gy ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing it. A bril­liant plan with­out dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion, is sim­ply an as­pi­ra­tion.

Peo­ple sup­port what they help cre­ate. This is why em­ploy­ee in­volve­ment is a crit­i­cal fac­tor of ex­e­cu­tion suc­cess. Many busi­ness­es chase em­ploy­ee “buy in” as though it rep­re­sents com­mit­ment, when, in fact, it does not. Em­ploy­ees can agree with a plan and still do noth­ing to ad­vance it. A more mean­ing­ful goal is se­cur­ing em­ploy­ee “opt in.” The dis­tinc­tion mat­ters. Buy in re­flects in­tel­lec­tu­al agree­ment. Opt­ing in re­flects a per­son­al com­mit­ment to con­tribute to the plan.

An­oth­er un­com­fort­able truth, is that not every busi­ness is ready to ex­e­cute a com­plet­ed plan. Plans should on­ly be launched when there is gen­uine ex­e­cu­tion readi­ness. Lead­er­ship teams bur­dened by un­re­solved cul­tur­al ten­sions, in­con­sis­tent be­hav­iours, or weak prob­lem-solv­ing prac­tices, should re­solve those is­sues. Ig­nor­ing dys­func­tion does not make it dis­ap­pear. It sim­ply guar­an­tees that those same dys­func­tions will sab­o­tage ex­e­cu­tion.

Ex­e­cu­tion dis­ci­pline re­quires a com­mon frame­work. Lead­ers need a shared lan­guage, con­sis­tent op­er­at­ing prac­tices and clear stan­dards for mea­sur­ing progress. When every­one fol­lows the same ex­e­cu­tion play­book, con­fu­sion de­creas­es, ac­count­abil­i­ty strength­ens and avoid­able mis­takes be­come far less com­mon. Lead­er­ship lan­guage should be as mea­sur­able as lead­er­ship ex­pec­ta­tions.

Am­bigu­ous lan­guage cre­ates am­bi­gu­i­ty in re­sults. Clear lan­guage, on the oth­er hand, sup­ports clar­i­ty in per­for­mance. Con­sid­er the dif­fer­ence be­tween say­ing “in­crease cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion” and say­ing “in­crease cus­tomer re­ten­tion by 30 per cent.” One de­scribes a de­sire. The oth­er de­fines a mea­sur­able out­come.

Lead­ers of high per­form­ing busi­ness­es re­move un­cer­tain­ty in their ac­tions. They es­tab­lish clear ex­pec­ta­tions, mea­sur­able tar­gets and a lead­er­ship cul­ture where ex­cus­es are un­ac­cept­able. The high­est per­form­ing lead­er­ship teams re­view busi­ness plan progress every month. Ex­e­cu­tion re­quires vis­i­bil­i­ty. The more fre­quent­ly lead­ers dis­cuss progress, the more like­ly they are to iden­ti­fy risks, ad­dress ob­sta­cles and cap­i­talise on op­por­tu­ni­ties. Month­ly re­views en­able lead­ers to re­spond to chang­ing re­al­i­ties, with­out aban­don­ing strate­gic di­rec­tion.

Con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion with em­ploy­ees is equal­ly im­por­tant. Si­lence cre­ates un­cer­tain­ty, which in turn, weak­ens trust. Em­ploy­ees are far more like­ly to sup­port strate­gic ini­tia­tives when lead­ers open­ly dis­cuss achieve­ments, set­backs and next steps. When changes have to be made to the busi­ness plan, due to chang­ing cir­cum­stances, lead­ers do so thought­ful­ly. This re­as­sures em­ploy­ees and pre­vents frus­tra­tion that would have been trig­gered by er­rat­ic lead­er­ship be­hav­iour.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the most suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es build cul­tures of ex­e­cu­tion. These cul­tures boast ac­count­able lead­ers and lead­er­ship teams that pos­sess an un­wa­ver­ing fo­cus on re­sults. In a cul­ture of ex­e­cu­tion, a gap be­tween in­ten­tion and ac­tion does not ex­ist. Busi­ness plan mo­men­tum is sus­tained and ex­e­cu­tion dis­ci­pline be­comes one of the lead­er­ship team’s great­est su­per­pow­ers.