Eugenio Pirri considers how leaders can build and launch their strategies, breathe life into them and execute them flawlessly
The previous instalment explored how to create a framework for your strategy, in order to build the foundations for what you are setting out to achieve. We will now consider how you can implement that strategy, bringing it to life and executing it flawlessly.
This, of course, is one of the hardest things to do. Too many people go out there and say: ‘Behold! Here is my strategy. I’m going to make it happen now.’
Ummm… how and when, exactly? Who will make it happen and how much will that cost?
Don’t for get – time is your friend
Time is about taking stock of what you’ve done and what you’re doing and using this to inform your actions. The best thing about the past is that it’s in the past. Think about the time you’ve had so far – what have you learned? What talents have you developed? What decisions have you made? Why? If you take all that knowledge you can use it in any job.
The beautiful thing about a new job or switching roles is that you get to reinvent yourself every time. You can start a new job with renewed confidence, a new style or a new focus.
When you start a new role, you have a unique opportunity to take stock, to assess your talents, skill-sets, leadership style. Take note of these and don’t decide too quickly what you want to create next.
I once took up a new role and, in the fourth week, I went to my leader with a load of ideas. He told me to stop and said he didn’t want any ideas until I’d been at the company for six months. This was a great piece of advice because I paused and then continued to take stock. When I think back on those original ideas, I now know they would have spelled disaster.
Even at entry level, you can take stock of who you report to, your trajectory and so on. If you don’t have time to do this, you cannot build a sustainable foundation.
There is far too much pressure on leaders to make decisions in their first 30 or even 100 days. Lots of leadership books have been written under the false assumption that leaders who don’t make their mark on an organisation within the first 100 days have failed.
I completely disagree with that. My advice would be to let yourself be known within the first 100 days.
Make an impact with your personality, your presence, your relationships – these will be key. Take counsel from colleagues because these relationships will enable you to put your strategies in place when the time comes.
People want to make a difference – but you’ll never get these first months back again. You can hit the ground running but use this time to ask ‘stupid’ questions, understand the business, think about innovations and lay the foundations of your strategy. Don’t try to do too much or you’ll be seen as an over-enthusiastic loose cannon.
Push the boundaries
If you’re reading this book and you’re already months or years into your role, it’s true that it’s much harder to be innovative and creative in strategy planning at this stage, than if you’re just starting a new job. But you could push the boundaries of your role. Think about the extra responsibilities you might be able to take on and don’t be afraid to broaden your ‘job description’. Of course, there will be core elements of your role that you must fulfil, but you can still create new opportunities; you’re not bound to a piece of paper.
Let’s take HR: the new breed of people leader is not limited to human resources, their remit encompasses ‘culture’, which embodies many more elements of the business, including customer service, CSR, facilities and even marketing. This means that rather than wearing a straightforward ‘HR hat’, they are likely to be juggling a variety of hats.
The profession of people leadership is always evolving and changing and you could explore other related departments in order to find opportunities for adding value.
Think about some of the roles in your business you’d like to know more about and investigate whether you could contribute in any way.
Education, education, education
The key to executing strategy successfully is creating awareness around it: educating your teams and telling people about what’s going on. This is where the work you’ve done in building relationships, mentioned earlier in the chapter, is going to pay dividends.
If you have your strategic plan and it is made up of a variety of different facets, you will need to spend some time running a roadshow: getting it out there and ensuring people understand it. For instance, if you’re planning a new engagement strategy, talk to people about how it will look in your company, how it will make sense; use specific examples relating to your company and your industry and bring it to life for your people.
When you invest time in communication and education, you’ll gain buy-in. This could take a week or it could take three months. It depends on the number of people you have to reach and how many levels of the business need to buy into your strategy. You have to factor in the time. If you launch something in the US, it could be finished in a month; in Italy, it could take a year. Some cultures are keen to get things going, whereas, in other regions, you will need to translate a proposal into the journey of the company, rather than shoehorn a strategy into place. Once you’ve considered the likely timescale, then and only then, will you be in a position to execute a strategy.
When I launch something, I tend to have meetings with people at various levels of the business. When we’re rolling things out, I want there to be champions at all levels, who have had the initiative explained to them in advance and will be able to ensure the strategy is lived throughout the business, to the extent that when we announce it, they already know what it entails and will be our champions within the audience.
When we introduce something, it’ll be launched at executive level, then general management level, then to committees, followed by the rest of the staff. You need to have senior buy-in – but you’ll need buy-in at all levels to ensure that something takes root and works. Everyone has to be on board.
From innovation to implementation
If you type ‘definition of innovation’ into any search engine, you’ll be met with in the region of 285,000,000 articles, all offering up slightly different takes on what the perfect innovation framework looks like.
But before you get carried away with ‘innovating’ I urge you to think about why you’re innovating. A fatal error made by businesses is focusing on one big innovation initiative but not following through on it, or implementing it properly.
For innovation to be successful, you need to ensure that the innovation makes sense in your business. Why do you want to innovate? Is it to gain competitive advantage or to be more efficient? Once you have decided why, it’s about how you define it – your definition of innovation.
For example, the only true luxury in life is time. It’s the one thing you can change (in order to receive more, or less, of it), unlike gravity or the laws of the world. Therefore, I define innovation as anything that offers a creative way of being more efficient and giving people more time to engage with customers. Engaging with customers creates loyalty which is fundamental to a business. If an idea shaves a mere three seconds off a process, then to me, you have succeeded in the innovation mission.
Once you have your definition, it’s about making sure you gain the right insight – insight that identifies a true business need:
- Challenge the status quo: try and look past conventional thinking to gain fresh perspectives and identify areas for improvement.
- Identify all stages that have led you to an insight, spotting opportunities to adapt and magnify the idea.
- Generate ideas to solve an issue that would be impossible, immoral or illegal and then consider ways of making them realistic.
Having said that, every time you come up with an innovation, the key thing is to think back through this book and work through the steps of your framework to make sure you can plan it and make it a success.
Does it fit with your company values and purpose? Do you and the business have the skills and talents to make it a success?
If you can devise solutions to any potential problems, then the time has come to build the framework for your innovation (as outlined in chapter five): strategise, educate, communicate, ignite, and finally, implement.
My top tips for innovation:
- Think outside of the box and be open to new approaches.
- Be curious and eager to learn; ask questions.
- Take risks and identify creative solutions.
- Encourage sharing of ideas to create the spirit of innovation.
- Find ways to anticipate trends.
- Seek opportunities to improve continuously.
What gets measured gets done
Only when people buy into your plan can its implementation run smoothly.
The final step is monitoring and measuring the success of your strategy as it rolls out. This will allow you to go back and tweak it, as necessary.
Just because you’ve developed a proposal doesn’t mean it’ll be your final strategy. Too many people think ‘I’ve written a plan, the board have accepted it; I HAVE to make it work’.
That’s rubbish. If you need to change it – change it.
Over to you
Use the following few pages to jot down some thoughts about the strategies you’re working on in your current role. With whom do you need to build better relationships? How should you communicate your ideas and from whom do you need buy in? How could you better monitor and measure the strategies your business already has in place?
Eugenio Pirri is an award- winning hospitality stalwart with a career spanning over 25 years; beginning in rooms division and then food and beverage, before making the transition into human resources. As a Chief People and Culture Officer for a global hotel management company, Eugenio is responsible for all aspects of HR, learning and development, employee and guest engagement, innovation and corporate responsibility, working with all functions in the business to ensure people are the cornerstone of every business decision.
