Strategy, Execution and Leadership

When consultant Ram Charan and retired CEO Larry Bossidy entitled their best-selling business book, Execution, they redefined the word for the business community.

Execution means the ability of an organization to deliver on its promises, the ability to perform efficiently and profitably, the ability to get results.

The big challenge: How to link leadership development, learning and business strategy in order to drive execution.

• How do you translate your organization’s strategy into action? Leadership development and learning as key mechanisms for doing that. When leadership development, learning, performance metrics, and reward systems were all aligned to an organization’s articulated strategy, the ability to execute on that strategy and demonstrate progress was dramatically enhanced.
• How do you calculate a return on leadership development and learning investments? Stop talking about return on investment (ROI), and begin talking about return on expectations (ROE). If we’re clear on what we’re trying to accomplish through leadership development and learning and if we measure our results against those expectations, we may have the data we need to prove the value of our investments.

BOTTOMLINE: CEO’s and senior executives are leading the charge to use leadership development and learning to speed-up and enhance the execution of business strategy. We must align strategy, leadership development, learning, business performance metrics, and reward systems in order to drive execution. Defining expectations for leadership development and learning initiatives was key if we ever hope calculate a return on a company’s investment in them.