Growth Strategy Implementation: Common Points of Failure to Avoid - Profici
Growth Strategy Implementation: Common Points of Failure to Avoid

Growth Strategy Implementation: Common Points of Failure to Avoid

Once you have developed a growth strategy, it’s important to implement it in a way that achieves maximum results. A lot of businesses are able to create a strategy, but many struggle to put that strategy into place in a successful way. In this blog, we have taken a look at some of the common points of failure to avoid, ensuring that your growth strategy has a big impact.

 

 

Don’t Make These Mistakes When Implementing a Growth Strategy

 

Failing to Consider Your Business’ Capabilities

 

A lot of different parts need to work together to run a business, all working together towards the same goals. A business is like a machine, made up of many different components. For example, you need finances, people, machinery and ideas to keep moving forward. If any of these components fail, the whole business operation suffers. When you implement a new growth strategy, you are changing things, and you need to ensure that everything else can handle and support that change. If you don’t, it’s likely that your growth strategy will struggle.

 

Before you put a new strategy into action, adjust your business’ structure and capabilities to match your new plans. If you don’t, you could lose momentum and support, which is likely to hold you back. Adjustments could be training or hiring new staff, investing in new tools, buying new systems or expanding your product and service offerings. These changes tend to come at a cost, so it’s important to plan for them in your strategy and before you implement anything new.

 

 

Getting Caught Up in the Day-to-Day Running of the Business

 

Everyone has experienced being so caught up in the day-to-day running of a business that they forget to take a step back and evaluate the business’ overall strategy. But, strategy isn’t just something that can be implemented at the last minute or squeezed in without a second thought. Growth strategy implementation needs to be a priority and something that you are actively focusing on every day, otherwise there’s a high chance of it failing to succeed.

 

Being too busy with day-to-day tasks can be a challenge, and it can hinder implementing your strategy. To overcome this, you need to set clear goals and make time for the implementation.

This could involve hiring extra staff temporarily to prevent regular tasks from piling up, or it could mean reorganising workflows to free up resources. Though day-to-day tasks are important and can’t be completely ignored, they shouldn’t get in the way of implementing a new strategy. You need to find a balance between maintaining regular business operations and making progress towards your long term growth goals.

 

 

Not Having Clear OKRs in Place

 

It’s not enough to create a growth strategy and have a plan for putting it into place, you need to actively work on making sure the strategy is working. This is where OKRs (objectives and key results) come in. OKRs help to track the progress of a growth strategy, making sure that everyone is working towards the same goal.

 

OKRs let everyone set their own goals and change them as needed, ensuring that they match with what’s happening in the wider team. Objectives give teams something to aim for, and key results help you to see how things are going. It’s similar to how KPIs (key performance indicators) measure progress, but these tend to be slightly less flexible.

 

 

Communicate the Strategy to the Wider Team

 

A lot of growth strategies fail because they are not communicated to the wider team. Though the people making the decisions might understand the strategy, it’s important to consider how well it’s been communicated to those who will actually be carrying out the work. Think about if they have the same vision as you, and if their role in the strategy is clear. Consider if they feel involved in the process, or if they need any additional guidance.

 

Getting everyone on board with the strategy is key, so make sure to explain the strategy in a way that everyone can understand and relate to. It’s best to keep things simple and concise, as this will make it easier for the wider team to be interested and invested in it.

 

Being Too Busy

 

There’s a lot that goes into growing a business, but being too busy can create problems. When you are too focused on completing new tasks, you might forget to prioritise tasks that will put you closer to your growth goals. When you launch a new growth strategy, you will undoubtedly need to put a lot of energy into doing things, without really thinking about whether they’re helping you to move in the right direction. This results in everyone being busy, but not working together to move the business forward.

 

To avoid this, you need to consider the most important things that need to be done in the next year or so, and focus on the projects that will have the biggest impact on growth. This is why strategic project management is so important, as it ensures that you’re not just doing something for the sake of it. With structure and by having someone in charge, it’s a lot easier to make sure that everyone’s efforts are benefiting the business’ growth.

 

Though it can be difficult to implement any new business strategy, it’s not an impossible task. By having a detailed plan in place, and avoiding the common points of failure mentioned above, a business’ growth strategy can be put into place successfully. Get in touch to find out more.