Every organisation, be it a private enterprise, a public entity, or a not-for-profit entity, is built on three crucial pillars. To ensure the organisation’s success, it’s vital that all three are established, implemented correctly, and operated in harmony. These three pillars are the enterprise’s Insight(the purpose), Strategy, and Execution.  This concept was briefly introduced in my previous article (Defining Execution -Understanding the Basics).

While I don’t have data to back it up, my experience says that 80% of the Agenda in any senior leadership discussion is disproportionately focused on insight and strategy, leaving Execution discussions to lower levels. Even when senior leadership does engage with Execution, it’s often at the Monitoring level with a limited understanding of on-ground needs.

For most of my Professional life, I have worked as a project manager with multiple organisations, both as an employee and a service Provider. Very few organisations have an Execution culture embedded across all levels. The best ones I have worked with had defined the right Executional culture from the very top of the organization. They have succeeded in the past and continue to do so. These organizations have created a holistic approach to execution.

So, How does that holistic approach look in practice?

A Holistic approach is an organisation’s mindset in which every level understands its role in Execution. Let me elaborate on this thought further. For simplicity purposes, any organizational hierarchy can be broken into three levels: On-Ground, mid-level, and senior-level leadership. The Execution roles and capability needs of each of these levels differ.

Starting with On-Ground leadership. On-ground leadership is about getting things done consistently day in and day out. To get things done, critical capabilities are skills addressing project management capabilities, people skills, process skills, and understanding of the tools and techniques needed to run day-to-day operations.

A mid-level leadership role requires translating the company’s strategic vision into executable actions and enabling the on-ground team to run the execution with the right resources and people. Their role is also to translate the On-Ground needs to the Senior leadership. The Executional capabilities needs are People skills, Stakeholder engagement, and Problem-solving. This level, unfortunately, is the most ignored for capability enhancement.

Finally, the Senior-level leadership role is to define the strategy and make it understandable for the rest of the organisation. The Executional Capabilities centre around Strategy Performance Management, Monitoring, and Enablement of mid-leadership. While strategy defines execution, there is also a need for a feedback loop that enables fine-tuning strategy based on feedback from on-ground execution.

Three levels of Organization need to be in sync in a “holistic approach to Execution”. Execution requires a laser-sharp focus, and a synced organization is much better equipped to be successful. The focus on setting up the right Executional mindset has to be driven from the top. Therefore, the capability development must also be in sync with the strategy. Organizations have limited training budgets. A holistic approach helps define the capability ramp-up needs accordingly, ensuring the best use of resources.