Failure to Implement - A Fatal Disease

Failure to Implement, as Paul Dunn of the Results company used to say, "Is a fatal disease."  Even now some of the best consulting businesses in the world promote around getting ideas off the paper and into life.  It's crucial to competitive advantage, and firms that implement better have the edge over those that get stuck.

(Un)Inspired by a three clients I thought I would share some thoughts with you on this disease, that illustrate different aspects of the problem.

Client one; "no alignment"
A great example of a common cause of failure to implement needed change; this client had to start to change because of the desperate results they were facing.  The challenges of failure forced them to take action, and the actions were good enough to get them back to a baseline.

They have however, so far been unable to address the root cause of their failure to thrive, which is a lack of unity of purpose among the key shareholders.  Unless this is addressed they will struggle to hit their potential as too much energy is spent in argument and disagreement, and energy for customers is low!  The MD realises this, and is finally ready to challenge his colleagues fairly on the point. 

There will be some hard times, and there are plenty of choices ahead, but there will be a great release of energy through some hard truths being spoken.  If they resolve the issues honestly, there is a chance to re-channel these energies into competing with competitors rather than each other.

Client two: "no confidence or experience"
The leadership of this very entrepreneurial client, in common with many, has limited experience of what can be achieved by the different professionals in more successful businesses.  In this case, they are great technically but had not understood sales.  For years the CEO resisted the very idea of sales.  He would counter that it was not really possible for a non-technical sales person understand the product benefits.

He just could not, in his mind, justify the investment in professional sales, and no amount of ROI planning would gainsay the risk aversion.

Was the bigger risk not getting sales help, or paying for it and getting it wrong?

Eventually he bit the bullet, and within six months was at first surprised and the delighted to hear his salesman politely request that he stop coming to meetings, so that the sales guy could operate more freely (and successfully!)  Growth took off.

What we believe about the world is based on what we have experienced.  The truth is that most of us have experienced so little, and some of our unchallenged beliefs will hold us back.

Client three: too much talk, no action
The final client had identified clearly the opportunity to grow, and the competitive threat to the business if they did not grow.  To get growth required some big decisions, which they felt they had made.  And yet still nothing happened.

Rather amazingly, the problem appeared to be not knowing how to act.  All of there energy was put into researching options, analysing and justifying marketing opportunities.  No energy or projects were directed into customer and new business development activities.

In this case the balance of the team was at fault, as well as their experience, led by thinkers with little concept of how to act on the very good and detailed thoughts.

I am sure you can think of many more cases to add to these.  The few businesses I know that can identify competitive advantage and move quickly to take the ground are normally winners.  The rest are average or lucky!