LEADING STRATEGY EXECUTION

The author, who is recognized as an expert in the intersection of leadership, strategy, and sales, contends that “if leaders are going to successfully drive the execution of their organization’s strategy, they need to strike the right balance of defining the work to be done and providing the boundaries for how it will be done.” He notes that for “leading strategy execution, I employ a model called magnets and milestones, a simple metaphorical model that offers a bridge from the strategy developed by leaders over to the execution required to realize the plan.” He explains that “the first level of magnets is what many of my clients call strategic initiatives, a kind of super project that is designed to address the needs identified in their organization’s strategy.” And within milestones, “too often, metrics become a substitute for strategy. But metrics are not milestones. They don’t help to make course corrections, allocate resources, or support decision‐making. Milestones do.” He concludes that the framework “allows you to rapidly spot issues with implementation that you need to be aware of and address. More importantly, magnets and milestones are not a substitute for strategy. They are an extension of it.”