| If you can’t make sense of your strategy quickly at the top, it is impossible to make sense of it 1-2 levels down the organization.
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Key Questions:
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One of the greatest challenges for a Senior Team is how to manage the paradox of creating great visionary strategy that is innovative and future-focused while, at the same time, dealing with what we call “the fierce urgency of now.”
In 2008, The Conference Board surveyed of 769 CEOs from 40 countries. When they asked them to rate their greatest concerns from among 121 different challenges, the vast majority chose “Excellence of Execution” as their number one concern and “Keeping consistent Execution of strategy by top management” as their third greatest concern.
Most leadership teams are whipsawed by the seeming shifting demands and priorities of their board or marketplace. Yet at the end of the day, the team has to decide on those few, but essential priorities around which to execute. There is a delicate balance between keeping dialogue open enough to fully explore options and making the decisions around where to sharply focus energy and resources. Utilizing the collective intelligence of a senior team, and the teams that report to them, to fully understand the "New" internal and external challenges, while balancing the “real work” of the “Now” is key to executing good strategy.