Businesses are always looking for ways to make their management and staff more productive and their companies more profitable and competitive. Many companies have turned to training and development that may bring about temporary improvements. Others have created rigorous strategic plans that don’t deliver the full expected outcomes.

Not to get to egg-head on you, but I read an interesting article recently and I would like to share some statistics. According to authors Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele in the August 2005 Harvard Business Review article titled “Turning Strategy into Great Performance”, on average only 63% of the objectives of strategic plans are achieved. This means that 37% of the plan objectives are NOT achieved - a 37% performance GAP. Or, in other words, if a sales plan calls for $100,000 in new business, $37,000 would have been left on the table. That's a lot to lose.

Why? What are these organizations doing or not doing to result in such a big difference between an organization’s strategic goals and the actual results? What gets in the way?

Surprisingly very little is attributed to a "tangible", such as lack of or unavailable resources. The key issues are how well the team communicates, aligns around top initiatives, creates short term and long-term plans, and holds themselves accountable to deliver the results.

Intellectually, most people know the importance of communication and accountability to successful achievement, yet they don't have the know-how to do what it takes to improve these skills. Or, more likely, they lack the discipline to do what they know is needed each and every day. What needs to happen may be common sense, but it is not common practice.

Communication, Leadership, Perseverance, Accountability, etc. - are often referred to as “intangibles” because the loss incurred by the lack of these skills is difficult to quantify in the traditional sense, i.e. Dollars & Cents. Therefore, most organizations don’t rate the importance of these skills to successful performance as high as they do the more typical indicators of success.

Yet research clearly shows that these “intangible” skills and disciplines are the biggest differentiating factor between organizations that do consistently achieve their planned strategic results and organizations that do not.

The top "intangible" issues contributing to this performance gap are:
• Poorly communicated strategy 5.2%;
• Actions required to execute not clearly defined – 4.5%
• Unclear accountabilities for execution – 4.1%
• Organizational silos and culture blocking execution – 3.7%
• Inadequate performance monitoring – 3.0%
• Inadequate consequences of rewards for failure or success – 3.0%
• Poor Senior Leadership – 2.6%

What can you do to close the gap in your business?

Start by acknowledging that your people are your business. More than your strategy, your marketing plan, your IT system or even your entire finance department full of spreadsheets, management information and predictions; people are the key to your success. To transform your business, transform your people.

Getting your employees, across the organization to work together, communicating with trust, taking personal responsibility for their own performance, as well as that of the overall business will generate considerable improvement. The secret lies in making sure that everyone in your business – including you – has the right attitude and is taking the right actions to produce results, time after time.

There are a number of options businesses have that can help them address the performance GAP. The particular program I use is called Best Year Yet, a planning and implementation process designed to bring about sustainable change for improved performance. This is the program I’ve found successful for myself, as a business owner, and in helping my clients.

The specific program, however, isn’t important. The important factor is to bring about sustainable change in the organization that will result in improved, lasting performance. For this to happen, make sure any effort taken addresses all of the issues noted above AND make sure there is unwavering support for this initiative “new way of doing business” at the top.

Until next time – Bold Results start with a Bold Vision! Go out there and Be Bold!

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