Introducing the State of Strategy Execution 2025

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. We've got a fun one in store today, a little bit different than our typical conversations. One thing you'll notice is we have no guests today. It is just going to be Joe and I. But we're also gonna have a fun topic for today. Instead of going through typical questions and all things strategy, we actually are excited to partner with our Achieve IT team on the release of the 2025 State of Strategy Execution report.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:47]:

This report actually came out yesterday by the time this recording was released, so on March 4th and it covers a lot of great insights on strategic planning, strategy execution of which will we be we will be walking through in our conversation today. But since this is the first conversation that Joe and I have had without a guest, we figured we'd do a little bit of intro on ourself for those new listeners or first time listeners. So Joe, kick it over to you, tell the crew about yourself.

Joe Krause [00:01:13]:

Oh yes, the most exciting topic. So Joe Krause, SVP of Strategy Consulting, which means that I work with customers and prospects to help them with their strategy execution journey. Been here for over going on 12 years. Hard to say out loud, close to 12 years. Prior to that I worked in the pharmaceutical business. I have multiple master's degrees that just focused on project management, strategic planning. So it's a passion. Looking forward to going over the results from the survey in just a moment.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:38]:

Thank you Joe. Joe's very humble about himself but a big expert in the strategy space and if you've listened to an episode before, you certainly heard that come out through the insight he shares from his experiences both in his own strategy role and also working directly with customers. As for myself of course Jonathan Morgan, SVP of Operations at Achieve it, where my role really entails a lot of different things, but it's a lot of internal operational and strategy related things. And I also have some experience as strategy consultant and some strategy specific roles, whether it's helping my own company or companies that I work for doing strategy or working directly with customer accounts as well. All right, let's get into the report and some summary information. A lot of times the first thing that people talk about with these sites of surveys is all right, tell me a little bit about who we actually surveyed and what the background is for this report. So in this 2025 State of Strategy Execution Report, we surveyed over 250 leaders, really across all different types of organizations. Different size, different shapes, different industries, everything from private companies to public companies to government entities and higher education, really, to get a robust sense of the challenges that people face in planning and execution.

Jonathan Morgan [00:02:51]:

Of our respondents, these were all either manager level or above. And what that means for this is that they had budget authority or higher than that to make sure that they really have a good understanding of what an organization needs when it comes to planning and execution. A quarter of them were executives, so getting all the way up to the top of the organization. And of the respondents, 55% of them responsible for creating and executing plans, 38% were focused on the execution side of this plan. And then 7% of them were responsible for executing the initiatives themselves. So I think this is an important thing to call up because we're not just surveying only the people that are leading a project. This is everybody that's really involved in the creation, management and execution of the plans themselves. So, Joe, before I go into some of the five themes, I just want to get your perspective on what you're hoping to get out of this report.

Jonathan Morgan [00:03:46]:

Quick note for the audience. Joe actually has not reviewed these results, so anything that I'm going to be talking about today is going to be a complete surprise to him to get that real reaction on his side. So Joe, what are you looking to get out of the conversation and the report?

Joe Krause [00:03:57]:

I'm interested to see how people are transitioning back into maybe a more normal planning cycle. Because as you can imagine with COVID and the residual impact of that, it's been a long road for people to get back to we got to plan normally again. And that might include having a multi year time horizon. People in the past were looking at maybe one year plans, not planning at all, just doing operations planning. And as we talk about on this podcast all the time, strategic planning is a business necessity. And I would love to hear that people are getting back to that because everyone benefits from a solid strategic plan that is executed flawlessly. There is really no downside to that happening, but there's a ton of downside if you're not doing it. So I hope that's what the data shows.

Joe Krause [00:04:35]:

And to Jonathan's point, I have not seen it. This isn't a power trick. This is real reaction straight from us.

Jonathan Morgan [00:04:41]:

Perfect. Well, I'd love to go through every single question in the survey. We would be going on for hours. For that, we're going to really focus on five themes that came out of the results, and we'll go through a couple of key statistics and answers in each of those themes. And of course, if you're interested in reading the entire report, reading all the stats, we'll link to in the description to the actual survey that you can download and review again. It was released yesterday, so it'll be available for review. And then we'll be continuing to put out content related to the results as well. All right, let's get into the five themes.

Jonathan Morgan [00:05:14]:

So as a whole, of course, a lot of good information here on planning and execution, but the five things that stood out the most is first, strategic success hinges on vision, tracking, and leadership. Second, consistent updates significantly increase the chances of hitting your growth targets. Number three, successful strategic execution demands alignment and clear visibility. Number four, strategic plan success depends on regular evaluation and ROI measurement. And number five, technology enables strategic success by improving alignment and tracking. So, Joe, I went through those fairly quickly, but I see you jotting down notes over there. Any immediate reactions from you going through those five themes?

Joe Krause [00:06:05]:

The regular evaluation one is something that I'm hearing pretty much on a daily basis with folks that are maybe evaluating Achieve it or folks that are already part of the Achieve it family and our clients. It's how do we actually measure the true success of our plan? Most folks have been up to this point, been very focused on measuring activity, how many things they did. But the idea of what outcomes were driven still proves fairly elusive. So the idea of how do we have leading and lagging measures is happening all the time. Also, the idea of consistent updates. Because if I'm talking to people that haven't maybe really taken strategic planning too seriously in the past in terms of making updates. If you're lucky, if people are making quarterly updates, sometimes it's semiannual and annual. And if you ever talk to me in any capacity about this, it's like monthly is the holy grail.

Joe Krause [00:06:50]:

So the idea of people saying that's important brings a tear to my eye because that definitely is something that is so easy to implement and makes a major outsized impact.

Jonathan Morgan [00:06:58]:

Yeah, couldn't agree more on those. Well, let's, let's jump in each one. We'll start off with the first one. Just to recap. Again, theme number one, strategy success hinges on vision, tracking and leadership. So with this particular theme, one of the important questions we asked that led us to this is what do you believe are the top reasons that strategic plans fail? There's a variety of responses. But if I look at the top five responses, number one is lack of leadership, number two is unclear objectives, number three is poor time management, number four, insufficient resources, and number five is inadequate communication. These are all very distinctly different things, but when you break them down into like what actually causes them, they really do point back to that theme is these are all things that leadership is responsible for in setting the tone for how an organization should plan and how they should execute that plan.

Jonathan Morgan [00:07:50]:

Right. Maybe people want to point that, oh, this is leadership's fault, but these are organizational and culture elements to build in. You know, how do you set clear objectives? How do you have leadership that continues to focus these forward? How do you enable people to manage their time in these strategies and initiatives? How do you give people the resources? And then fifth, how do you continue to communicate those to the company and to the organization? So Joe, what are your thoughts on those responses for why plans fail and how does that map up in your experience?

Joe Krause [00:08:22]:

Yeah, it's an easy scapegoat to say leadership, but honestly, that's the group that's usually making the plan. So if you're going to blame a group, that's probably a pretty easy group to blame. So leaders listening to this, I mean, it is you, you're not asking your teams to make a strategic plan for the org. So if a plan doesn't get off the ground, there's usually a bit of root cause. I was talking with a group that was potentially looking into using Achieve it and they were, they were using a specific planning methodology that has very specific ways to do things. And I was asking them like, well, they said it didn't work last year and we're just looking for a new way. And I was like, okay, for that planning methodology, here are the six or seven things that you need to have in place for it to be truly that methodology. And they weren't really doing any of the seven.

Joe Krause [00:09:01]:

And so it came down to me basically saying to myself, that's not necessarily. You're not really planning in a way that's going to then be get a reaction from your team. So ultimately, yes, leadership needs to make it a priority and then also like, be very clear about how you're going to plan. There's about 15 or 20 different planning methodologies you can choose from. Balanced Scorecard, OGSM, OKRs, you know, pick one that makes the most sense. I love the idea of simplicity over some sort of complicated thing or whatever ends up being complicated for people to understand. And at that point Once you have that, you have to sit in a room with your, with your other leaders and say where the heck do we want to be when we grow up? Let's call it five years. Right? So big question always is how long should our plan be? A two to three year plan with annual lookbacks is definitely my go to, but a five year vision is definitely very doable.

Joe Krause [00:09:48]:

I mean that's not that far away. People overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they could do in five. I forgot who said that, but I love to give them credit.

Jonathan Morgan [00:09:55]:

I heard that, I think it was from a TV show the other day. I heard the same exact thing.

Joe Krause [00:09:59]:

Yeah, it might have been somebody. It's definitely out there. You know, who knows? I'm on social media too much but yeah, it's probably on LinkedIn every day. But the idea, it really is like if you set a five year vision, that seems like, oh, what do I know I'm going to do in five years, it'll be here in a second. So here's where we want to be in five years. How are we then going to incrementally make progress towards it? That's where the plan comes in. And then once you have the idea of where you want to be picking a plan, planning methodology should be fairly simple. We always have our opinions.

Joe Krause [00:10:24]:

So if you have any questions on which ones we love the most, that could be another topic for another day. But pick one, stick with it and follow the rules of the actual process. If it tells you to have a metric at this level, don't skimp on that. It's not a cafeteria type style thing where you can pick and choose which elements you have. If you do that, it allows you to explain it much better to the people that are actually doing the work. And if you do that then they're not going to have some of the stuff that Jonathan mentioned which is not understanding the vision, not understanding how they're in line. And then last but not least, it's always important to figure out when you are telling people to do something that maybe is outside of their normal scope of work. How are we going to incent the behavior, be it them participating in the process where it's like maybe you don't have money to divvy out bonuses for people doing really well in the plan.

Joe Krause [00:11:07]:

But recognition doesn't really cost much. So how can we potentially have a recognition program to identify people that are really taking the strategic plan and running with it? You have to think about all that and then last but not least, how are we going to communicate what the heck's going on with the plan? I think that never happens really any way, shape or form. It's like you're lucky if you get maybe an update once or twice a year. You have to do this monthly if you really want to make it work. So these are the types of things you have to map out as leaders. And that way it gives nobody any room to be able to say it was leadership's fault because you really made sure you were peeking around every, every corner.

Jonathan Morgan [00:11:39]:

Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway from me on this is that the answer, none of the answers really none of like the top 10 said bad ideas or bad projects or poor initiatives. I think that's the most promising things for leaders and strategy individuals is it's not the ideas a lot of times that you're missing, you know, in this, in this response, it's the lack of leadership. How are you actually focusing the organization towards those? Funny enough, you mentioned Joe on vision. Another question we asked was related to that. And 91% of the respondents said a lack of strategic vision is a key reason that plans fail. It's not that you don't have the vision. I think that comes back to this.

Jonathan Morgan [00:12:19]:

The first stat I walk through is this. That's a lack of leadership. It's how do you then use clear objectives? How do you give people the time? How do you give people the resource? How do you talk about it? That reinforces the leadership, that reinforces the vision that you already have. You're just not talking about it enough.

Joe Krause [00:12:35]:

And if you really want to make this now, I like examples. And every time you listen to our, our podcast, we try to bring in, like, stories of the day. And like, what does, like, lack of vision look like? Think of any brand that maybe you decided, you know, I don't go there anymore because things are just different. You know, I don't go to Starbucks anymore because there's never a chair for me. I don't go to McDonald's because it costs $48 for my family to eat. Or I can just go to Chili's and, you know, get a meal for 14. These are the types of reckonings that a lot of companies are coming to grips with. You're seeing Starbucks do a complete re pivot on, like, why it's important to spend $8 for a latte.

Joe Krause [00:13:09]:

I mean, what it makes you feel. McDonald's rolling out value meals to say it's actually cheap to eat here again, why don't you come on down. These are the types of things because those companies pivoted away from what made them special and unique and what their vision was. And that then trickles down to the experience that we have. So sometimes for your organization, depending on where you work, it might be hard to pinpoint what a lack of vision looks like. But think of any brand that has fallen off in your mind and you will see what a lack of vision will get you. And it usually means you're not spending money there, you're not spending your time there. And those companies are on borrowed time at that point.

Joe Krause [00:13:42]:

So ask yourself, are you in that category for your own business? And are you on borrowed time? Because that's, that's the situation that you have to rectify. And the good news is, is that the first step is admitting you have a problem. This is a good time to maybe ask yourself, are we true to our vision? And if not, let's take steps to fix it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:13:58]:

Love it. All right, let's move on to theme number two. Reminder on that Theme two is consistent updates significantly increase the chances of hitting growth targets. I think as a overall that makes obvious sense. Well, yeah, no, duh, absolutely. We keep getting updates, we keep hitting our growth targets. But what I found interesting about the responses that related to this around updating and accountability is that there's a big polarity in what people said and what they actually did. So I'll kick it off with a couple of pieces of information here.

Jonathan Morgan [00:14:32]:

The first is 66%. So roughly 2/3 of the respondents believe that consistent updates significantly increase the likelihood of hitting their targets. So that's the theme that makes absolutely sense. However, when you talk about what are you actually doing, only 56%, so barely over half use KPIs or metrics to keep their plans on track. And Even lower, only 40% use it to hold their employees accountable for progress. And then roughly 55% use status updates or regular check ins for progress. So Joe, my question to you is 2/3 of leaders are saying it's important, but half to less than half are actually doing it. Talk to me about how that even.

Joe Krause [00:15:19]:

Makes sense because the idea of it and the actually doing it are two different things. I think we all agree more communication is better until you're the one that has a bad update to give. Right? Everyone thinks this is great until their project's the one in the red and they're the one that's going to be called on the carpet. So it goes back to leadership originally where the reason why people feel this way is because you probably gave them a reason to feel that way either. Maybe it wasn't you. I'll give you some credit. It might have been a previous job. The little PTSD from previous roles where they were told, I want the truth.

Joe Krause [00:15:47]:

Give me, give me what's really happening on the ground. And then he did, and they were punished for it. Either admonished in front of a group or it limited their career trajectory. People are skittish on making status updates. It's the same reason why they don't want to pick KPIs. A KPI puts a target, a scoreboard. This is the reason why salespeople are some of the highest paid people in the world, because they literally walk around with a scoreboard over their head all the time. And if you ever talk to a salesperson at the end of the month or the end of the quarter, you can get a sense of why they make that money.

Joe Krause [00:16:14]:

They're under extreme duress at all times. That doesn't always translate to every other functional area. And so it's a little weird for folks to have the idea of a scoreboard. But if we're talking about the reasonable role here, we have to score if what we're doing is making an impact. So it's your job as leaders to just to really have that conversation and realize some functional areas might have more scores they're tracking over their head, but everybody has to have at least one. And if you say, I can't be tracked or I don't have somebody that could be tracked, if you ask the five whys, you'll find something. There'll be something that you can track in the short term and in the long term. And if you're not being intellectually honest and you're saying you can't at least be honest with it and say you don't want to do it versus it can't be done.

Joe Krause [00:16:55]:

So let's put that out there. And then it's how you react when somebody marks something red or yellow. Are you going off the rails? Are you getting crazy with that person to say, like, I can't believe you did that in front of my boss. You have to get that clear. So what I would recommend is if somebody on your team marks something yellow or red, make up, go above and beyond and really saying, thank you so much for doing this. You don't have to get crazy with it, but at least highlight the fact that they're not being punished and that they're actually being rewarded for Honesty and more importantly, that's only, that's like the minor thing. The bigger thing is stopping a small problem is becoming. Becoming a bigger problem.

Joe Krause [00:17:27]:

That's the bigger thing here by being honest. So to answer your question, that people are just generally scared about having the spotlight shine on them because many functional areas, that's not the norm. It's more project based. Here's what I got done versus a scoreboard.

Jonathan Morgan [00:17:41]:

Yeah, I think for me the positive thing out of this area is that it's confirmation largely that gone are the days where, you know, a plan just collects dust. On the shelf is the old adage where we create it. It sits on the website, we have this big offset retreat and then we don't actually do anything with it. At least we're seeing, hey, we're consistently getting updates. I think the disconnect is still how are you getting those updates and how are you marrying quantitative with qualitative information? There's a lot of organizations that are still out there where their consistent updates is sitting around a big table or a virtual table and giving updates. And that's how they're tracking their plan. Maybe it can be effective, but where you see the most effectiveness and the most impact is when you can say these are updates. But also these are the quantifiable items that we're measuring success based off of.

Jonathan Morgan [00:18:33]:

And this tells us if we're moving the needle in the right direction. Right. Just like if we're an individual, we always use example in our New Year's resolution. Maybe we're still going with it here in February. We want to be a healthier person. You're not just going to wake up one day and say, yeah, I feel healthier. You're going to have metrics that are hopefully tracking yourself towards those health goals or those fitness goals goals or financial goals or whatever the case may be. So hopefully listeners and readers of this report can recognize that and say, you know what, we are doing a good job getting updates, but those updates aren't tied to tangible results.

Jonathan Morgan [00:19:07]:

And maybe we're not actually doing anything with those updates.

Joe Krause [00:19:10]:

And for those that you are still unconvinced, like, oh, we can't, we don't need that. Do those types of updates for our strategic plan, Go talk to your project management friends. Ask them if they would work on projects without a tracker or real key milestones or budgets or KPIs. I mean, they live and die by that tracker. Why is that okay for that discipline, but not strategy? And I think you know the answer. So obviously Whatever project management principles exist, applying those to your strategic plan is never a bad thing. It's not going to be as complex because project management does need a little bit of more detail than a strategic plan. But the basics should be there.

Joe Krause [00:19:42]:

Who's responsible by when and how often do I want to hear from them? And if I'll say it again, monthly. You want to hear from them monthly on your strategic plan.

Jonathan Morgan [00:19:50]:

Great. Well, before we move on to the next theme, one stat to leave with here on this area is 79% of companies that are relying on manual data collection for these updates say it takes them longer to respond to strategic shifts. So just think about that. How can you automate these updates? How can you get quicker responses so that you can move more quickly for your results? All right, theme number three. Successful strategy execution demands alignment and clear visibility. I think a lot of people again understand this in principle, but it's how are we actually executing on it? So a couple of good stats to start out with. Only about a third of leaders feel their goals aren't aligned with departmental objectives. That was actually lower than I expected.

Jonathan Morgan [00:20:32]:

I thought people would say they aren't aligned at all. But a good majority of people are aligned with departmental executive. However, on the other side, three fourths, 75% say that a lack of cross department of visibility hampers their ability to execute strategic plans effectively. So similar to the last theme. Right. Large majority of people say that it cross departmental visibility impacts their execution. But there's still a good portion of people that aren't aligned across their departments. What are your thoughts on that, Joe?

Joe Krause [00:21:02]:

Somebody I worked with in the past in a strategic planning capacity comes to mind. Names will be omit it to protect the innocent. But doing a strategic planning retreat with them, they were very adamant that every business unit should not see every other business unit's item. They were the same company, same everything. But this business unit that does this functional thing for this company shall not see the plan for this other functional area. The end result of that was a very big national issue of recalls and all sorts of fun stuff that some of the reasons were cited were the lock that the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. It's an extreme example, but that shows you they really didn't have a great example as to why that barrier needed to exist. But they were adamant and as a result it led to pretty much an issue that is threatening their livelihood as a business because of it.

Joe Krause [00:21:48]:

And so that's an extreme example that we don't see Too often, but it gives you a sense of why visibility might be important. At the other side of the extreme, it's like at a bare minimum, you want to know what everybody else is working on so that you're not repeating work that happens a lot. Wait, you're implementing a CRM? We are. Like that type of stuff is so simple. That's not like mission critical. Yes, I understand. Losing money would not be a good thing for anybody. It's not going to make you go out of business, but it is still important.

Joe Krause [00:22:12]:

So ultimately you chatting with your colleagues is good so that you are not duplicating efforts at just at a bare minimum and at the extreme, it can allow you to spot business killing things that potentially be creeping up because you're not communicating. So of all the low hanging fruit of things that you can do as a planner and as somebody, as a leader, is to not have the silos, just to have everybody, at least a representative from each department get together a few times a year to have a chit chat about what they're working on. There's really no downside. I can't. If you have, please email us if you have a downside as to what collaboration has wrought in your organization. I'd love to hear it, but I would assume the list is pretty small. So if we can do something simple to fix a big problem, then why not do it? That's my, that's my belief.

Jonathan Morgan [00:22:54]:

Yeah. And honestly, I think the further results support that last statement there. 77% of organizations actually have a formal strategy to promote collaboration and break down those silos. So. Right. People are thinking about it. However, there's always a however with this data.

Joe Krause [00:23:08]:

Always.

Jonathan Morgan [00:23:09]:

Almost 80% of the failed strategic initiatives can still be attributed in part to a lack of collaboration. Right. So we have this, we want to do it. We've got a strategy in place. This is what we're doing. However, it's still impacting results. My take on that is I think a lot of people, you get into the whirlwind of the day to day and you're so focused that you, you don't have recurring meetings across teams or you don't have regular touchpoints or you aren't using those updates to talk to the other team members. I think people focus on let's break down these silos.

Jonathan Morgan [00:23:40]:

That's a great objective. Probably the more near term thing to do is let's just better connect these. Right. There's still going to be walls for certain reasons. There's going to be things that are harder to just totally break down and have this big, large kumbaya family, but just have ways to stay in touch. Right. Have a regular recurring meeting across the teams, have some way to share what you're working on, how your reports are progressing, how your KPIs are progressing, so that you can at least stay in touch and say, you know what, I'm having this issue on this. And someone from another team says, you know what, we did this very similar initiative two quarters ago.

Jonathan Morgan [00:24:14]:

This is how we overcame that problem with resourcing or whatever the case may be.

Joe Krause [00:24:18]:

That's very helpful advice for when the plan's in action. And if we go back to the beginning of the plan, ask yourself, you have the right people in the room. I mean, what's the harm? And if you typically are building the plan with eight people, VP level or something, and you're like, yeah, we didn't hit the mark last year. Well, maybe open it up to maybe one director per department to come in and have a. And double the size. I mean, you can't have every single leader in every single meeting. I get that. But if the goal here is to have alignment and to understand the plan, might be good to have some extra voices in there.

Joe Krause [00:24:44]:

And those are the future leaders of the company in theory too, right? Like from a succession planning perspective, them feeling connected, being part of the plan, being asked their opinion doesn't cost you anything. And meanwhile, they'll feel like they're at the table. And for our Hamilton fans out there, they want to be in the room where it happens. Right? So that is not a bad thing. And once again, doesn't cost anything. The downside is you have extra people in the meeting, but the upside is you have a better plan and all your people are happy because they feel like they're connected. So I think if it's a pick a hand, you know which which hand to pick.

Jonathan Morgan [00:25:13]:

Couldn't agree more there. All right, well, we'll keep pushing along here. Don't want to get too deep into any one of these. Moving on to number four, Strategic plan. Success depends on regular evaluation and ROI measurement. I think ROI measurement, I think, is a certainly a newer trend in planning. If you're on the financial side, obviously you're doing that a lot. But it's good to see this pop up in this particular survey on the more negative or scary side of this data point or this theme.

Jonathan Morgan [00:25:39]:

About half through two different questions, about half of the respondents are really unsure of how to track progress against their strategic goals or Answered a different way. They aren't sure that they have the proper tools to measure the success of their plans effectively. So that's, that's the downside. The ones that are doing it well, that are tracking their plans, that have regular evaluations. So 82% of organizations conducting at least an annual strategic plan evaluation reported an increase in goal achievement. So take away from these stats is, hey, there's a lot of people out here. 50% have no idea how to track it. Those 50% that do, they're on average being way more successful.

Jonathan Morgan [00:26:21]:

So, Joe, talk to me about what you've seen in that space for how you're tracking and managing your plans.

Joe Krause [00:26:27]:

Yeah, I think ultimately most people don't really have a really great way when you ask them how they're tracking their plan. It's a cobbled Together process of SharePoint, Excel, PowerPoint, Word. Most organizations maybe don't have a person that's responsible for it. So it's like a shared responsibility or they deputize somebody to do it. And so ideally you have somebody who at least that is not an executive leader, be somebody that maybe in a developmental role could be like the Pied Piper for the plan and find a way to track. We're a little biased, obviously. We have software that helps organizations track the plans automatically. I do find that to be a superior way.

Joe Krause [00:26:59]:

It's not the only way, just the most functional way. But a lot of times the rules of engagement for the plan once it's been created are not clearly defined. Like, what are the expectations? What's a good status update look like? When do I mark something yellow? What happens if I mark something yellow? Where's the data coming from? Can I trust the data? These are all things that people are asking themselves or they haven't thought to ask it. But it's your job to make it very clear. So we have a thing that we give our clients called a governance guide. And it basically gets to fill in the blank with our clients. We fill out and it's every last question that might come up, an faq, if you will, about the rules of engagement for the plan and who's going to be looking at the report, how will it be used? What happens if I don't make my update? These are all things that you can easily put together in a couple hours time. And then it does answer all the questions.

Joe Krause [00:27:43]:

So if somebody does detract, you could tap on the glass and say, hey, what's going on? This is the way we're working. We talked about your commitment on this. That's what I've seen. So ultimately skimping on the governance of the plan upfront is the reason why a lot of these plans fail. And that it comes down to using kind of manual tools. And if you're Getting updates from 150 people using Excel, you're probably going to do that for one month before you're pulling your hair out.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:07]:

Yeah, I think for me, I was a little bit surprised by this answer. I guess was hopeful that it would be a little bit higher on people understanding how to track their plans. You mentioned a lot of good points, Joe. I think one other thing that stood out the most to me is that the concept of ROI measurement is something that's in my experience, very, very difficult for companies to actually get a handle on. Right. Because it entails, all right, what's the cost of this overall initiative? What's all the resources into it? And then what are we actually getting out of that? You get used up. Health system, as an example, you have very clear understanding of a building this new facility is going to cost this much and we're going to generate this much in either revenue or improvements to our patient experience or deliver for our constituents. But if you're in a private or public company, you may not always have that data.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:58]:

The reason I call that out is because respondents that said they do integrate ROI measurement into strategic planning are 10 times more likely to see an increase in their goal achievement. So, Joe, this again, a little bit of a harder area. But what good things have you seen organizations do as far as how they can incorporate that ROI measurement into their plans?

Joe Krause [00:29:21]:

Pick a planning methodology that has a level in the planning breakdown that requires a metric. It's a good place to start. Right. So if you're saying, I'm going to build out a section of our plan, let's say it is healthcare and quality is the focus area. I mean, you have a variety of metrics you could track. So the goal here is not you're not tracking every quality metric. You're tracking the ones that are preventing you from being the best organization you can be. And that'll lead you probably to three or four that in an annual time period you can fix.

Joe Krause [00:29:48]:

Maybe it's stroke care, maybe it's preventable falls. You know what those numbers are, and you could benchmark those against where you need to be in order to be top tier gold medal status. Right. So you know what your baseline is. You have that today. If you're struggling with the target, use a benchmark and then don't pick 50 metrics, pick 4. You'll probably only have the ability to impact 4 if you're lucky. Right.

Joe Krause [00:30:08]:

So the idea of just because you have the data doesn't mean it goes into the plan. If the data goes into the plan, you're saying that these are the items, that these are the metrics that need to be rectified and here are the activities we're going to undertake, initiatives, projects, and that's it. So I've seen folks sometimes say, well, what about the other metrics? Well, if you're not doing anything activity wise, then you're just in there for no reason except for reporting. Reporting has its place. We're talking about strategic planning. So don't boil the ocean. Pick the critical few. And if you do that, the plan kind of comes together.

Joe Krause [00:30:37]:

I've seen a lot of folks take a decent amount of time, especially in healthcare, to get those critical few, but once they do, the light bulbs go right off. Oh, okay, got it. Oh, I mean go right on. Sorry, not off on that levels. Go on. And they go, ah, okay. So everything I should be doing should be focused on these four things. And if I can't draw a bright line to my activity impacting preventable falls in this case, then I probably shouldn't be doing it.

Joe Krause [00:30:59]:

Is that right? And you go, yes, that's exactly right. And so it's time well spent and that's exactly how I'd recommend doing it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:31:06]:

Perfect. Well let's, let's move on to number five. Number five, technology enables strategy success by improving alignment and tracking. So I, before we go through this, I just want to promise it's not a layup to everything being about achieve it. This is more focused on how are you measuring plans through dashboards, through systems, through reports, as opposed to the old fashioned way of sitting around a table or update an Excel spreadsheet or updating a word doc, whatever the case may be. So for me there was a lot of good information here. The one that stood out the most is that, you know the concept of real time dashboards. These are dashboards that as data comes in or as updates come in, it gives you a sense of how the plans are progress, are progressing.

Jonathan Morgan [00:31:53]:

Organizations that reported they use real time dashboards were 10 times more likely to see an increase in their goal achievement. So this wasn't something that, oh yeah, you know, it's a little bit helpful when you combine whether they use dashboards or they don't. The success they saw in their plans, the success they didn't sell on their plans. 10 times more likely to see success. So, Joe, what's your takeaway from that data point?

Joe Krause [00:32:17]:

Yeah, we keep using the word dashboard because that's the technical term, right? Cause that's what it is. But the other word would be scoreboard. Think about if you are competitive in anything that you do, be it a board game or playing pickup basketball with your friends on the weekend. If you're keeping score, you're going to play harder. It's just the way it goes. I don't know if I watched the atrocious All Star Game recently. I'm a huge NBA fan. I watch every night go Knicks.

Joe Krause [00:32:37]:

It was unwatchable because they didn't try. You know that you try harder when there's a score and a dashboard and KPIs and all that are in essence create a little bit of competitiveness. It goes back to the point I made earlier. The best salespeople in the world are competitive by nature because there is a number one and then there's a, there's no second place prize. Right. You're either number one or you're not. And so that can apply to every other aspect. And I'm not saying take your nonprofit or take your healthcare institution and make it into a boiler room type Wall street environment, but generally we all do better if there's something we're striving for.

Joe Krause [00:33:10]:

To Jonathan's point earlier, if I'm losing, if I'm trying to lose ten pounds, knowing that I lost ten pounds is an extremely motivating thing. So don't think of it as a bad thing. And most of the time people think of the negative side, which is what happens if I don't hit my target? I'll look bad. Well, what happens if you hit your target and you prove that you made a nice impact? Like that's, that's a good thing and there's really no downside to it. And most of the time if you didn't hit a target or a number, it's not because you didn't try. Maybe you picked the wrong things or the market conditions change or your hypothesis needs to be updated, but at least you not are then chasing the good, the bad after the good. You're, you're not going and doing the same thing over and over again. So you owe it to yourself to do these tracking exercise.

Joe Krause [00:33:48]:

And most of the time it's all upside. Very limited downside.

Jonathan Morgan [00:33:52]:

Yeah. And I think one of the good things, I don't have the exact stat on my, on my hand right now, but most people actually reported, I think it was over 60%, that they are using some form of dashboards. One thing I'll caveat with that, and in my experience, what I've seen a lot of organizations struggle with is what is the lens that we're looking at this dashboard, right? So to Joe's point, you need to have a scoreboard. You'd have a way of tracking. But I find a lot of people, they're just all focused on the stats. Right. I, you know, also a big sports fan. I, I have three young kids, I don't get to watch a lot of things live, but if I need to check on something, I'll pull up the ESPN or other sports app and I'll go in, I'll see the score and if I'm interested, I'll zoom into the details to see how certain players or individuals are performing.

Jonathan Morgan [00:34:35]:

A lot of companies, they miss that top thing, right? They miss what's the score, they miss how's each quarter performing or how's each key indicator performing. And all it is is the stats. So if you're somebody that's really involved in the game and in the process you can make, you can deduce from the stats how your company is progressing, what is the score. But most of the time we talked about earlier, with lack of visibility and alignment and silos that are created, you don't have that understanding across different teams. So it's hard to make your own assumption on what the actual score means. So break it down simply. You know, first of all, if you have a dashboard, great. Make sure that you have them layered at different levels to give people understanding how are we winning or are we losing? If we're winning, great.

Jonathan Morgan [00:35:22]:

Who can we celebrate or what are areas we can continue to prove? If we're losing, why are we losing? What's going off track? How can we continue to focus on this and move forward in the, in the right direction? One last thing for you, Joe, on this topic is roughly 2/3 of the respondents that use technology for strategy are confident that they see better overall alignment with their long term goals. So technology dashboards, often talked about from a visibility standpoint also really enhanced alignment as well. So I don't know if you have any experience in seeing that directly as well.

Joe Krause [00:35:57]:

So you're specifically asking if technology is leading to better outcomes. Is that the long and the short.

Jonathan Morgan [00:36:02]:

Of it really, it's that led to better outcomes in alignment and not just visibility. So they felt their teams are more aligned through the use of technology and dashboards.

Joe Krause [00:36:12]:

Yeah, I think the reason I asked the caveat there, I think is that mainly they're kind of one of the same. Right. Because if you are have the planets visible by its very nature, then you would think it would be aligned. I know there's probably some exceptions to that. Like in achieve it we have a tree view and basically if you have access to it, you can see exactly where you fit. And the cross functional thing, so that makes sense, attracts logically to me is if the plan is visible, you're going to feel more aligned. The reason why you don't feel aligned is because you don't know where to find the plan. So they're kind of very similar, but different methodologies.

Joe Krause [00:36:41]:

Like just because a plant is visible doesn't mean that also is a really well thought out plan. So let's assume the plan you made was great. If you make it visible, you're solving two birds, you're feeding two birds with one scone, as they say, versus the killing of the birds. You have the ability to create both things. And if people have visibility and they feel aligned, you will see better outcomes. We mentioned it on previous podcasts, but the Project Management Institute found if somebody feels connected to the work, they are aligned. There's a 73% chance of that work getting done. If they have no clue why they're working on something or just flying blind, 42% chance of that work getting done.

Joe Krause [00:37:14]:

So that aligns very nicely with the stats that Jonathan mentioned. People want to feel connected and if they do, they're going to work harder. And if they work harder, doesn't always lead to the exact outcome you'd hope, but it does stack the deck in your favor.

Jonathan Morgan [00:37:24]:

Perfect. Well, Joe, a lot of great insights here. I wish I could have gone through way more. I had double the stats on my piece of paper and that's still only a fraction of the information that we have in the overall report. So if you're listening to this and you want to learn more, we'll link to it in the description it should be. It was released yesterday by the time this podcast episode is out. So read it, download it, share with your friends, if you have any questions, reach out to us. We'd be happy to talk about it more.

Jonathan Morgan [00:37:50]:

But again, the five key takeaways from the data that was pulled together across these 250 strategy leaders is. Number one, strategy success hinges on vision, tracking and leadership. Number two, consistent updates significantly increase the chances of hitting targets. Number three, successful strategy execution demands alignment and visibility. Number four, strategic plan success depends on regular evaluation and ROI measurement. And lastly, number five, technology enables strategy success by improving alignment and tracking. So, Joe, I gave you initial question out of the gate asking what you were hoping to get out of this. What's your overall takeaway? Knowing still you only have a fraction of the results so far.

Jonathan Morgan [00:38:38]:

What's your takeaway from today's conversation?

Joe Krause [00:38:40]:

I think people know what needs to be done, which is good. Sometimes you question like, do they think that strategic planning is an effort worth doing? And I obviously firmly believe that it is. This data validates that people know that if you have a good plan and you are aligned, good results typically follow. So that's very encouraging. Thomas Edison has something like, I'm going to butcher the quote, but it's something like, people are scared of hard work because it's dressed in suspenders and it looks dirty. It's hard, right? People get nervous when they look at this. They go, oh, in order to do this right, we're going to have to do so much. And as a result, they don't do it.

Joe Krause [00:39:11]:

And so I think that this was what the data shows too, is that everybody knows what needs to be done. Now, it's just a question if you're going to do it. So I'd rather have that problem than the other way around. But I'm very pleased and it aligns well with the trends that I'm seeing talking to people on a daily basis. So never a bad day at the office when that's happening.

Jonathan Morgan [00:39:28]:

Yeah, I think it's a very fair takeaway. I also was pleasantly surprised at some of the positive responses throughout. I think, you know, to your point earlier, you never know how things are coming out of few pandemic years and really strategy space getting turned upside down. But I think people have reaffirmed the importance of it. They know what they should be doing. It's just how do we, how do we take these basic, at times, basic blocking and tackling items like, let's have key metrics, let's talk about those metrics, let's get updates on it, let's have communication that goes out to the rest of the organization, really going back to the very first stat we talked about around why plans fail. These things aren't, we don't have enough money or we don't know what we should be doing. We don't have clear objectives, we don't have great leadership, we don't have good time management, we're not managing our resources effectively and we're not communicating it the most promising that on this is those are five very solvable things.

Jonathan Morgan [00:40:26]:

Just by putting focus on it, it's not. We need new ideas and new strategy. Let's focus on the basics and let's hopefully get these things improved. Yeah.

Joe Krause [00:40:35]:

For the clients that we work with, I mean, on average, they're up and running in four to five weeks. In solving the majority of these issues, we talk to them and say, what are the biggest issues you have? And we're able to rectify the majority of them in a short amount of time. So if you're on the fence here, you're like, looks like a lot of work. Yeah. I'm not going to say that it isn't some work, but doesn't need to be complicated. And there's a very clear path to fixing these problems because to Jonathan's very astute point, none of these problems are that big. In culmination, they seem big, but if you break them down into the four or five little things, you can easily fix them with the right guidance. So that could be you and your organization.

Joe Krause [00:41:05]:

That could be you talking to us. Whatever ends up being it can be fixed. So if you're on board and you want to do this, you can. And that's the other takeaway here, is that it is a need to have, not a nice to have. So make the time to do it and not only just do it, do it right. And I'll be bold to say there is a right way to do it. We went through a lot of the ways today, and hopefully you apply some of them to your planning process. And we'd love to hear from you on how you made improvements over the course of the year as you listen to this podcast.

Jonathan Morgan [00:41:32]:

All righty, Great. Well, Joe, anything else for our listeners from you?

Joe Krause [00:41:35]:

I think I've said enough. Thank you. Thank you for pulling this data together, though. I was happy to hear it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:41:39]:

Alrighty, Joe's got his suspenders on over there. According to Einstein, he's got suspenders under his jacket. So he's ready to go.

Joe Krause [00:41:45]:

Yeah, I'm ready. I got the suspenders. Let's go.

Jonathan Morgan [00:41:48]:

Alrighty. Well, thank you, everybody. If you have any questions, let us know and we'll be back in a couple weeks.

Joe Krause [00:42:06]:

Sat.