Strategy Execution Heroes Intro Ch1 Ch5

Advance praise
“Our world is facing uncertainties never seen before. Designing winning
strategies, as tough as it can be, is only part of the challenge facing senior
management. The most difficult part is to continuously translate our
strategy into superior performance at all levels of our organisations.
That’s what this book is all about: tips and tricks to get things done”
Gérard Mestrallet | CEO | GDF SUEZ

“This book absolutely nails the three things every manager needs to know
about strategy – execution, execution, execution!”
Bill Saubert | Regional Business Leader Australia/New Zealand | MasterCard
Advisors

“Strategy Execution Heroes is a wonderfully written and well-organised book
with a clear commonsense approach to strategy implementation. It is a
must-read for any manager regardless of position or years of experience”
Michael Benavente | Managing Director Watches | Gucci

“Organisations have become very aware that much great strategy is lost
before it’s turned into performance, mainly as a result of poor execution
skills. This book is a significant step towards addressing that gap: it takes
strategy to the manager level, providing practical everyday recipes to
make sure that the ‘big picture’ does not remain a boardroom abstraction”
Bruno Lanvin | Executive Director, eLab | INSEAD

“Strategy Execution Heroes provides leaders with a practical strategy execu-
tion how-to guide which includes a brilliant summary of Jeroen’s personal
experiences combined with an extensive collection of best practices from
leading experts in this field”
Martin Jensen | Head of North America LTE Services | Nokia Siemens Networks

“Strategy Execution Heroes is a refreshingly different approach to strategy
implementation. In an extremely pragmatic and actionable way, it puts
managers and their individual roles at the centre of the execution path-
way rather than the organisation and its systems. Well worth reading!”
Michel Hofland | Finance Director | L’Oreal

“Strategy is a fascinating field, but time and time again we see brilliant strate-
gies fall down due to poor execution. Strategy Execution Heroes really hits
the spot by showing what can be done to drive successful execution. I highly
recommend this book to strategists and business leaders striving for maxi-
mum impact”
Bart Sweerman | Senior Director Internet Business Solutions Group | Cisco

“Even the best strategy is worthless if you are unable to get it implemented.
Execution is key and Strategy Execution Heroes explains how to do it”
Matthieu Crépey | Former Retail Director | L’Occitane

“This book takes a refreshingly different approach to Strategy Execution. Most
importantly, it is hands-on and presents new perspectives on known prob-
lems. Inspiring input for practitioners!”
Prof. Dr Frederik Ahlemann | European Business School Germany

“Strategy Execution Heroes takes a different approach to all other books that
I have read on Strategy Execution. Most importantly, it focuses on the man-
ager and his individual role in the implementation of strategy rather than on
the organisation. A breath of fresh air!”
Thilo Kusch | CFO and Board member | Magyar Telecom

“This book is a compelling read that drives right to the heart of successful and
flawless strategy execution. Many other strategy books float in the clouds of
organizational theory, but this is what we really need – practical, specific
and hard-hitting direction and real-life advice”
Jeffrey Stephen Kehoe | Regional Head Bancassurance Asia | AXA

“Practical, structured and with proven advice; exactly what a manager needs”
Karel Van Eetvelt | Managing Director | UNIZO

“Strategy Execution Heroes helps you build the foundation to champion and com-
municate strategy within your company. And it contains great insights from
well known executives that I found immediately helpful for my organisation”
Phillip Shoemaker | Director Applications Technology | Apple

“Strategy Execution Heroes gives a pragmatic series of hands-on tips and
tricks to help implement your ideas. Not all of them fit my situation. However,
those which do are absolute breakthroughs!”
Armin Knapp | Senior Controller | Salzgitter AG

A PRACTICAL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT GUIDEBOOK
FOR THE SUCCESSFUL LEADER

- Strategy Execution Heroes -

Business strategy implementation and strategic management demystified:
a practical performance management guidebook for the successful leader

Copyright © 2010 by Jeroen De Flander. All rights reserved.

www.jeroen-de-flander.com

Manufactured simultaneously in the United States and UK.

Notice of Rights
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without
permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote
brief passages in a review. For information on getting permissions for reprints
and excerpts, contact permissions@the-performance-factory.com.

Published by the performance factory
Louizalaan 149/24 Avenue Louise, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
www.the-performance-factory.com
Cover design: Uncompressed

To report errors, please send a note to errata@the-performance-factory.com

Notice of Liability
While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this
book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to accuracy or
completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied
warranties or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The advice
and strategies and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your
situation. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit
or other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental,
consequential or other damages.
Readers should be aware that internet websites offered as sources for further
information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written
and when it is read.

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Throughout this book, trademarks are used. Rather than put a trademark symbol
in every occurrence of a trademarked name, we state that we are using the names
in a editorial fashion only and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no
intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade
name is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

Publications of the performance factory are available via amazon.com
or amazon.co.uk. For bulk purchases, please contact
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ISBN 978-908148731-3
D/2010/12.173/1
NUR: 801, 808 | BIC: KJC, KJMB | BISAC: BUS063000, BUS071000, BUS059000
Keywords: Strategy, Leadership, Skills

Dedicated to my parents,
Marie and Wilfried,
my heroes

Strategy Execution Heroes Intro Ch1 Ch5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeroen De Flander is a seasoned international Strategy Execution expert,
top executive coach, seminar leader and highly regarded keynote speaker.
Jeroen has helped more than 15,000 managers in 16 countries mas-
ter the necessary execution skills.
He is co-founder of the performance factory – a leading research,
training and advisory firm which is solely focused on helping individuals
and organisations increase performance through best-in-class Strategy
Execution.
For several years, he was the responsible manager worldwide of the
Balanced Scorecard product line for Arthur D. Little – a leading strategy
consulting firm.
The 50+ companies he has advised on various strategy execution
topics include Atos Worldline, AXA, Base, Bridgestone, CEMEX, the
Flemish and Belgian governments, GDFSuez, Honda, ING, Johnson &
Johnson, Komatsu and Sony.

To book Jeroen to speak at your next event or to run a strategy
execution seminar for your company, please contact him through
his website www.jeroen-de-flander.com.

VII

ABOUT THE EXPERTS

Strategy Execution is a vast domain that required choices to be made
about topics covered. It also meant that one person alone could not
have the expertise to cover all the topics. The following five experts have
therefore contributed to this book.
Each of them helped me in the writing process by delivering content
and challenging ideas. A summary of their experience and credentials
follows.

Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan is acknowledged as the foremost authority
on communication and change behaviour. Combining complementary
expertise in management science, sociology and information technol-
ogy, he is the best-selling author of six non-fiction books. He has taught
MBA courses at the London Business School, the Rotterdam School of
Management and the ADL School of Management at Boston College.
He is in constant demand as a speaker, consultant and teacher and has
given over 1000 speeches, presentations and workshops around the
world. His book Unwritten Rules of the Game was voted one of the top
25 business books in the year of its release.

Sir John Whitmore is regarded as the world’s best coach and founder
of performance coaching. He has written five books on sport, leadership
and coaching, of which Coaching for Performance is the best known hav-
ing sold 500,000 copies in 17 languages. Honoured with the President’s
Award by the International Coach Federation (ICF), rated the number
one business coach by The Independent newspaper and as having had
the most impact on the coaching profession by the UK Association of
Coaching, John is one of the leading figures in the international coaching
community. He is a pre-eminent thinker in leadership and organisational
change and works globally with leading multinational corporations to es-
tablish coaching management cultures and leadership programmes.

VIII

Volker Voigt is an acknowledged initiative management expert. He
is a well-known speaker on project events and co-author of a number
of books on the subject. For several years, Volker was Arthur D. Little’s
responsible manager for developing and applying project management
methodologies in large and complex client projects. In 2000, he found-
ed Cataligent, a leading provider of web-based enterprise project sys-
tems which today has 5,000+ users worldwide. Some of the companies
that use the software are Lufthansa, Adidas, Vattenfall, Thomas Cook,
Bertelsmann, US Postal Services, AGCO and Korea Thrunet.

Vincent Lion is an expert in strategy, innovation and technology
management with a focus on the related competences’ development.
He teaches MBA courses at Solvay Business School, United Business In-
stitutes and the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. As a management con-
sultant, he helps leading companies like KBC, GDFSuez and Belgacom
design and implement ambitious strategies and build the supporting
competence centres. His workshops on developing strategic, innova-
tive and technological competences are widely recognised as achieving
exceptional business results.

Koen Schreurs is a Strategy Execution expert who specialises in
aligning individual performance to the business strategy. As former
Managing Director of GITP Belgium – a leading HR consultancy – he
has an in-depth knowledge of individual performance management.
His background as management consultant within the Arthur D. Little
Strategy & Organisation division has provided him with the exper-
tise and experience to forge the links between individual and organi-
sational performance. He is co-founder of the performance factory
where he heads up all surveys and benchmarking projects and related
R&D efforts. His professional clients include Allianz, AstraZeneca, Bay-
er, Bridgestone, Brussels Airport, DeltaLloyd, GDFSuez, ING and the
Belgian Government.

IX

CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

About the author VII
About the experts VIII
Superman on a ‘Strategy Rescue’ mission 1
Start your journey 5

PART 1 GET TO KNOW THE 8
I. A new mathematical enigma: performance 0+0=8 13
II. You should be in the #1 spot 33

PART 2 ACT WITHIN THE 8
III. Challenge 1: Aim: Can you reach 245? 41
IV. Challenge 2: Communicate: 121, 1210 and
12100 or more 61
V. Challenge 3: Coach: Become a 3% member 91

PART 3 ORGANISE THE 8
VI. Challenge 4: Simplify: From 100-to-1 in less
than 3 years 121
VII. Challenge 5: Initiate: How to eat an elephant
with 5 people 145
VIII. Challenge 6: Develop: Dice with 6 dots
on each side 167

Bibliography 191
Index 193
Acknowledgements 201

XI

CONTENTS

About the author VII
About the experts VIII
Superman on a ‘Strategy Rescue’ mission 1
Start your journey 5

PART 1 GET TO KNOW THE 8
I. A new mathematical enigma:
performance 0+0=8 13
How much potential performance are
you losing? 14
What’s in a name? – Strategy Execution deﬁned 15
The 8 – a unique Strategy Execution framework 21
The 8 – crucial building blocks 23
The extended 8 28
Strategy Execution: your next competitive advantage? 29
Performance takeaways 30

II. You should be in the #1 spot 33
Are you a strategy tourist? 34
Strategy Execution and the leadership challenge 35
The manager: a hero in a movie with many actors 36

XIII

PART 2 ACT WITHIN THE 8
III. Challenge 1: Aim: Can you reach 245? 41
What you can learn from 100 goal-setting
studies with 40,000 individuals 43
The six secret success factors for best-in-class
individual objective setting: 44
Success factor 1: Don’t break the strategy chain 45
Success factor 2: Make sure it all adds up 46
Success factor 3: Don’t be too SMART 47
Success factor 4: Don’t assume too quickly that
someone is motivated 47
Success factor 5: Focus on getting the
leadership objectives right 48
Success factor 6: Don’t let a template ruin an
important exercise 49
What your organisation can do to improve
individual goal setting 50
A view on Strategy Execution by Michael Smith,
Vice President Group Strategy and Planning,
Coca-Cola North America 53

IV. Challenge 2: Communicate: 121, 1210 and
12100 or more 61
Building pyramids: strategic thinking demystiﬁed 61
Boost your one-to-one communication skills 64
Become an author: 65
A few tricks of the copywriters’ trade 66
Make killer PowerPoint presentations to
communicate your strategy 67
Inspire an audience 70
Nineteen tips to improve strategy communication
in your organisation 72

XIV

How to use the intranet to promote your strategy
and its execution 77
A view on Strategy Execution by Shane Dempsey,
Vice President Human Resources and
Communications Europe, Novo Nordisk 82

V. Challenge 3: Coach: Become a 3% member 91
What every performance-oriented manager should
know about coaching 92
Grow Me: Coaching individuals with the best-known
coaching model in the world 93
Thirty tips to become a better performance coach 101
Grow Us: Coaching from a company perspective 108
Five actions to take coaching to the next level in
your organisation 109
A view on Strategy Execution by Douglas Johnson-
Poensgen, Vice President Business Development, BT 111

PART 3 ORGANISE THE 8
VI. Challenge 4: Simplify: From 100-to-1 in
less than 3 years 121
The nine most common performance management
process issues 122
Twenty-seven guidelines to improve the Strategy
Execution process in your organisation: 125
The ﬁrst nine 126
From 10-to-18 129
From 19-to-27 133
How to write a great performance story with the
manager as the hero 136
Four frequently asked questions about
performance stories 138

XV

A view on Strategy Execution by Alan Maxwell, Vice
President Human Resources, Lockheed Martin 139

VII. Challenge 5: Initiate: How to eat an
elephant with 5 people 145
Some facts and figures about projects and
programmes 146
Why do most managers struggle with initiative
management? 147
Thirty-two tips organised according to five initiative
management fundamentals: 148
Fundamental 1: Collect, select and prioritise
the right initiatives 149
Fundamental 2: Optimise your resource
allocation and planning 151
Fundamental 3: Develop your project managers 155
Fundamental 4: World-class project and
programme management 157
Fundamental 5: Manage your strategic
initiative portfolio 159
A crucial next step, but almost always forgotten 161
A view on Strategy Execution by Jean-Francois Van
Kerckhove, Vice President Corporate Strategy, eBay 162

VIII. Challenge 6: Develop: Dice with 6 dots
on each side 167
Some facts and figures about skills development 169
The eight most common management
development mistakes 170
Thirty-seven tips organised according to six
management development fundamentals: 173
Fundamental 1: Define the skills you want
and how you are going to get them 174

XVI

Fundamental 2: Manage your development
portfolio 176
Fundamental 3: Design world-class learning
interventions 178
Fundamental 4: Execute ﬂawlessly 181
Fundamental 5: Set development objectives 182
Fundamental 6: Measure success 183
Don’t forget your Strategy Execution process owners 184
A view on Strategy Execution by Hervé Borensztejn,
Senior Vice President Human Resources, EADS 185

Bibliography 191
Index 193
Acknowledgements 201

XVII

INTRODUCTION

Superman on a
‘Strategy Rescue’
mission

S uperman, otherwise known as Clark Kent, flies into the office.
Instead of his usual red cape, he has decided to wear his three-
piece grey pinstriped Armani suit. “It just seems more appropriate” he
had thought while getting ready that morning.
Superman is reacting to a ‘failing strategy’ distress call from 53-year-
old Mike, CEO of Magnatexx, a large pharmaceutical company. It was
the 267th call he had received in the two weeks since starting his new
sideline – the ‘strategy rescue’ programme.
When he arrives at Magnatexx, Superman immediately identifies the
execution issues and takes over the role of all managers. In no time at
all, Magnatexx obtains the desired competitive advantage and perfor-
mance starts to peak. And everyone lives happily ever after.
This story seems too good to be true. And it is.
But you don’t have to be able to fly like Superman, scale walls like
Batman or become green and super strong like the Incredible Hulk to
turn a great strategy into great performance.
You need performance-driven managers who master Strategy
Execution.

Introduction 1

Strategy Execution is no longer ‘the gap nobody knows’, the title
of the ﬁrst chapter of the best-seller Execution. Thanks to the authors
Bossidy and Charan, Strategy Execution pioneers Kaplan and Norton,
several leading articles in respected business magazines such as The
Harvard Business Review and a host of research, organisations have
become very aware that much great strategy is lost before it’s turned
into performance mainly as a result of poor execution skills.
The performance gap is known. And it’s time for companies to close it.
This book will help you get the job done. Strategy Execution Heroes
will help you to:
1. Approach Strategy Execution from a manager’s perspective.
2. Align individual and organisational performance in a simple, easy-
to-communicate, sexy Strategy Execution framework.
3. Communicate your strategy effectively.
4. Set great objectives for yourself and your team members.
5. Coach others through the implementation maze.
6. Simplify your Strategy Execution process.
7. Select, manage and deliver your strategic initiatives.
8. Set up a development platform to boost the execution skills of
others in the organisation.
9. Turn Strategy Execution into a competitive advantage.
In short, this book will help you get the execution job done. But don’t
expect complex theories or fancy words. Strategy Execution Heroes gets
right to the point and won’t waste your time. It will:

Boost your learning with 250+ practical tips revealed by senior exec-
utives from BT, Coca-Cola, Lockheed Martin, eBay and many others.

Inspire your thinking with useful insights from top experts such as
Sir John Whitmore, Dr Peter Scott-Morgan and Prof Vincent Lion.

 your action plan on the right track with 27 valuable downloads.
Put

2 Strategy Execution Heroes

So whether you are a future manager preparing for the challenge,
a manager in the ﬁeld or an experienced senior executive, get ready to
boost your execution skills. Become a Strategy Execution hero and turn
your great strategy into great performance.

Introduction 3

INTRODUCTION

Start your
journey

D ear Reader,
You are about to start discovering Strategy Execution Heroes.
To help you get the most out of this experience, I have added some com-
ments and suggestions.

1. Download supporting material. This book contains more than
250 tips, which you will find on almost every page. And you can
download even more supporting material including self-assess-
ments, examples, extra tips, reading lists and workshop guidelines.
For your convenience, I’ve added an overview of all 27 available
downloads on page 9. The downloads themselves can be found at
www.strategy-execution-heroes.com/downloads. Your access code is
the fourth word on page 126.

Where you see a box such as this one with a in front, support-
ing material is available at the website www.strategy-execution-
heroes.com/downloads

2. Be inspired by stories from the field. Six senior executives
from different fields and industries share their visions of Strategy
Execution.

Introduction 5

At the end of each of the chapters in Parts 2 and 3, one of them gives
you tried and tested insights to inspire your actions.
There’s a short overview of all the senior executives involved on
page 8, along with the page references.

3. Follow your ‘learning’ logic. The first two chapters provide a gen-
eral overview. You don’t necessarily need to read them per se to un-
derstand the others – although, of course, they will help if you’re
fairly new to Strategy Execution. So feel free to start reading from
the beginning, or alternatively with the chapter that intrigues you
the most. It’s up to you.

4. Remember the 80/20 rule. This book is loaded with ideas and sug-
gestions. But not all of them will have the same impact when executed.
Be selective. Pick your battles. And direct 80 percent of your ener-
gy to those 20 percent of the ideas that you think will boost progress.
Most of the key sections have self-assessment downloads to help you
direct your focus.

5. Study alone, with a coach or a whole group. Embark on a self-study
course, involve your coach or discuss your findings with colleagues.
I have indicated where team discussions would be appropriate. For
some of them, workshop templates are available for download.

6. Embark on a learning journey. I’m delighted that you are ready to
get reading because it means you are interested in Strategy Execution,
my passion. I’m certain that the book will help you after the first read,
but in order to maximise your learning experience, you should read
it more than once. Embark on a learning journey and keep your copy
close to hand as your Strategy Execution travel guide.

7. Keep up-to-date and exchange ideas. Strategy Execution is a vast
area in constant evolution. Stay up-to-date with the latest develop-
ments, collect more tips or exchange ideas with fellow Strategy Ex-
ecution devotees. There are a number of ways to keep yourself on
top of the game:


Join Linked SE (Strategy Execution group), the official Strategy Exe-
cution group on LinkedIn, the premier professional network on the
internet. Go to www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2325487.
Subscribe to the performance factory newsletter. Go to www.the-
performance-factory.com/register.
Write to me. I would be very interested in your Strategy Execution
tips and suggestions. You can drop me an email at jeroen@jeroen-
de-flander.com or use the contact page on my website www.jeroen-
de-flander.com/contact.

Jeroen De Flander
www.jeroen-de-flander.com

Introduction 7

Senior executives sharing their views of Strategy
Execution – an overview
Michael Smith 53
Vice President Group Strategy and Planning,
Coca-Cola North America

Shane Dempsey 82
Vice President Human Resources and Communications
Europe, Novo Nordisk

Douglas Johnson-Poensgen 111
Vice President Business Development, BT

Alan Maxwell 139
Vice President Human Resources, Lockheed Martin

Jean-Francois Van Kerckhove 162
Vice President Corporate Strategy, eBay

Hervé Borensztejn 185
Senior Vice President Human Resources, EADS


Overview of the 27 available downloads
1. The Strategy Execution Barometer®: research report – a summary.
2. Link your objectives with the next level up – a template.
3. Interesting leadership resources.
4. How to give effective feedback – tips.
5. The Pyramid Principle – training module.
6. A great communication model – training module.
7. Great books on writing – a list.
8. Improve your podium performance – tips.
9. Evaluate the quality of your strategy communication – a checklist.
10. Build a professional strategy communication plan – ‘how to’ guide.
11. High-quality coaching questions – examples.
12. Select the right coaching tips – a checklist.
13. Score your Strategy Execution process – self-assessment.
14. Boost your Strategy Execution process – guideline overview.
15. Boost your Strategy Execution process – workshop format.
16. Write a great performance story – an example.
17. Write a great performance story – workshop format.
18. Best-in-class initiative management – a checklist.
19. Best-in-class initiative management – workshop format.
20. Interesting project management resources.
21. How to set up a strategy ofﬁce – tips.
22. Score your management development mistakes – self-assessment.
23. Create a solid development platform – a checklist.
24. Create a solid development platform – workshop format.
25. Deﬁne your future capabilities – workshop format.
26. High-quality competency dictionary – an example.
27. A Strategy Execution master class – agenda.

Downloads available at www.strategy-execution-heroes.com/downloads

Introduction 9

PART 1

GET TO
KNOW
THE 8

11

CHAPTER I

A new
mathematical enigma:
performance 0+0=8

“However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally look at the results”
– Sir Winston Churchill

“Don’t measure your performance by what you have
accomplished, but by what you should have
accomplished within your capabilities”

“Strategy Execution is all about realising the full
potential of your strategy – and not limiting yourself
to only 50, 60 or 70 percent”

I magine you run a removals company. And every day, of the 100 box-
es you move for your customers, you lose 60 of them. How long do
you think you would stay in business?
Or imagine you are a tennis player. And every match you play, you
hit every other ball into the net. How many matches do you think you
would win?
According to research published in The Harvard Business Review,
“Companies realise only 40-to-60 percent of their strategies’ potential

Chapter I - A new mathematical enigma: performance 0+0=8 13

value”. The rest is lost on the way or never makes it over the net.
The numbers don’t look great – and over the last 10 years many
companies have started to realise that it takes much more than a great
strategy to be number one in their industry. You need to turn that great
strategy into great performance.
That’s where Strategy Execution comes in. It bridges the gap be-
tween brilliant strategies and superior performance. Led by Balanced
Scorecard inventors Kaplan and Norton and best-selling authors Bossi-
dy and Charan, Strategy Execution has become a fast-growing bleep on
the radar screens of top executives.
But simply appearing on that radar is not enough to make it happen.
Each company, large or small, needs to master crucial Strategy Execu-
tion skills.
In Chapter 1 we look at where companies lose performance and
zoom in on how sound Strategy Execution can help.

How much potential performance are you losing?
So Strategy Execution is no longer the black hole that drains perfor-
mance. Organisations today are aware of the performance lost through
bad Strategy Execution.
But in order to take the next step – to close that gap – organisations
need a more detailed view on exactly where they are losing performance.
Knowing that your organisation loses between 40 and 60 percent of
its strategic potential on the execution highway between the city ‘strategy’
and the city ‘performance’, is an interesting fact but doesn’t really help
solve your problem.
Nine years ago, I started collecting detailed Strategy Execution data
as I was fascinated by the implementation black box that was costing
organisations millions.
Today, the database managed by the performance factory, is probably
one of the largest Strategy Execution databases in the world, with data
from more than 1100 companies, 29 industries and 36 countries.
On the site www.the-performance-factory.com you can download a free


summary or buy the Strategy Execution Barometer®, a detailed bench-
mark report that will compare your implementation strengths and weak-
nesses with your industry peers and the overall market.
Here are some interesting facts. Of all respondents:
– 15 percent believes that the strategy is the wrong one for their
company.
– About one-in-three – 30 percent – receives no information on how
to execute the strategy.
– Only 61 percent is convinced that the strategic initiatives are
staffed with the right people.
– As few as 27 percent believes that the strategic initiatives are being
managed correctly.
– 27 percent doesn’t receive any individual feedback.
– 17 percent indicates that performance isn’t monitored.
– 38 percent indicates that poor performers don’t face any con-
sequences.
– 18 percent is unable to explain how to translate the strategy or set
individual objectives.
– 27 percent receives no training on essential management skills.
– Only 57 percent do not question the objectivity of appraisals.
In short: the results indicate that initiative management is the weak-
est link in the execution chain, followed by strategy communication and
skills development. The complexity of the Strategy Execution process
comes in fourth place.

Performance download 1. The Strategy Execution
Barometer®: research report – a summary.

What’s in a name? Strategy Execution defined
Strategy Execution can be deﬁned as ‘all the actions necessary to turn
your strategy into success’. But this short deﬁnition won’t help you very
much in getting a better grasp of the discipline.


So let’s go beyond this single-line explanation and take a broader
look at Strategy Execution. Here are 12 insights:

1. Strategy Execution is a vast area with blurred borders. It in-
cludes several processes – from budgeting to evaluating individual
objectives, and involves all functional domains.

2. Strategy Execution is a discipline of its own. Making strategy
work isn’t the same as strategy making. It’s a different game with its
own rules, potential pitfalls and best practices. Four important dif-
ferentiators are:
 involves everyone. From the CEO to the blue-collar worker,
It
everyone is involved in executing the strategy. Their roles might
be different, but all individuals contribute to the organisation’s
execution effort.
 takes much longer. You can build a strategy in a few weeks (or
It
months at the most) but the execution can take several years. It’s
a sprint versus a marathon.
 demands short- and long-term thinking. While executing, you
It
need to manage your long-term implementation plan and worry
about the nitty-gritty actions you will take tomorrow.
 requires a specific skill set. A different game demands dif-
It
ferent skills. The most important strategy skill by far is ana-
lytical thinking, whereas executioners particularly benefit from
strong objective setting and people skills such as communica-
tion and coaching.

“Execution is a specific set of behaviours and techniques
that companies need to master in order to have competitive
advantage. It’s a discipline of its own”
– Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy, Execution

3. Great Strategy Execution requires a great strategy. Even if
Strategy Execution differs greatly from strategy building, it cannot


exist without it. In fact, a great execution can never compensate for
a poor strategy.

4. Strategy Execution requires your attention from the start. And
the start is the strategy formulation phase. Execution isn’t something
you worry about after you have already finished crafting your strategy.
You need to think about the implementation challenges at the
same time you design your strategy.
Here’s an overview of the five most important implementation
hazards to think about while developing your strategy. To give you
a head start, I have included for each one, the key question(s) to ask
during the strategy design phase:
 The existing culture. Strategies that demand a large cultural shift
are doomed to failure as cultural change is very hard to accomplish.
Ask yourself: ‘How big is the culture change needed in order to
execute the new strategy?’ and ‘Is the required change realistic?’.
 existing power structures. Each organisation has its own power
The
structures, invisible at the surface and part of the ‘unwritten rules’
within the organisation. But they do exist. And they will influence
your execution capabilities. Pose the following questions: ‘What are
the current power structures in our organisation?’ and ‘How will
they impact the implementation of the strategy we are developing?’.
 ability to change. Each strategy will demand a change effort.
The
And I can tell you the effort is always bigger than you anticipate
at the start. Ask yourself: ‘How much change can our organisa-
tion handle?’.
 The maturity of the execution process. Once finished, the strat-
egy will use the existing execution processes in your organi-
sation. Upgrading is possible but takes time. So ask yourself:
‘What’s the current maturity of our execution capabilities?’, ‘Is
there a need to upgrade?’ and ‘How long will the upgrade real-
istically take to accomplish?’.
 The maturity of the Strategy Execution skills. Related to previ-
ous. Processes need skilled people to operate them. The questions


to ask: ‘What’s the current maturity of the manager’s execution
skills?’, ‘Is there a need to upgrade?’ and ‘How long will the up-
grade realistically take to accomplish?’.

“Culture eats strategy for lunch, every day”
– Dick Clark, CEO, Merck

5. Strategy Execution has a strong timing sequence. You don’t do
everything at the same time. One thing happens before the other,
and the order is important.

6. Strategy Execution requests a seamless integration between
organisational and individual performance. You can look at
performance from either an organisational or an individual per-
spective. But in order to realise your strategy, a connection be-
tween both is crucial. Most will agree with this statement, but few
will actually make it happen.

“Building a visionary company requires one percent vision
and 99 percent alignment”
– Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last

7. Strategy Execution demands clear responsibilities. Strategy Ex-
ecution takes place across different organisational levels. Depending
on the size of the company, these include the overall company level,
one or more intermediate levels – usually called division, depart-
ment or team – and the individual level.
In large organisations, you can have up to 10 different par-
ties involved, including corporate functions, functional lines, re-
gional structures and countries. In addition, within each of these
structures, responsibilities are often dispersed among the depart-
ments of human resources, ﬁnance and strategy and the various
leadership teams.


Pretty easy to lose some of your strategy in this structure, wouldn’t
you say?
So in order to make it work, you need to deﬁne clear responsibili-
ties for all parties involved.

8. Strategy Execution requires horizontal alignment. Building on
the previous point, I’d like to stress the importance of a strong hori-
zontal collaboration between business and support departments.
Their relationship should go beyond the annual budget and month-
ly operational meetings.

9. Strategy Execution needs heroes. Managers are the most impor-
tant players in the execution contest. In fact, strategy remains a pa-
per exercise without managers taking the right actions and fulﬁlling
their roles. They contribute content, are the links between organisa-
tional levels, and act as performance role models.
And this requires the right attitude. Execution isn’t something oth-
ers should worry about. Each manager should:
– Acknowledge the importance of Strategy Execution.
– Understand what Strategy Execution is all about.
– See execution as an essential part of being a leader.
– Know how to maximise their crucial role in the whole process.
– Develop the necessary Strategy Execution skills.
On top of that, senior managers need to put the necessary pro-
cesses in place to ensure that all managers in the organisation become
execution heroes. This is a challenge in itself.

“Strategy Execution isn’t something other people should worry
about while you are doing something far more important”

10. Strategy Execution asks for measurement. In many organisa-
tions, Strategy Execution is still a black box. You throw your strategy
in one end and performance comes out the other end. But nobody
really knows what did the trick. It’s impossible to say what worked


and what didn’t. Even worse, companies change things for the worse
because they don’t know the key elements of their execution success.
So, as with all other business activities, organisations need to mea-
sure their performance. It’s time to open the implementation box and
see what’s inside. Here’s how:
Find the strong and weak points of your execution process. If possi-
ble, compare them against your competitors. Evaluate the complete
process or zoom in on one or two steps. Do the exercise for the
organisation, one or more divisions, or start with only a small team.
Once you have gained these insights, focus your energy on
those things that matter most for the organisation. In other
words, set priorities.
Don’t forget to keep doing what you do well. Once you’ve identified
your strong points, make sure you keep them best-in-class.
Have a long-term perspective. It takes time to build capabilities. Small
organisations should count on 18 months to become best-in-class.
For a large multinational, it can take up to three years to get there.
Your measurement approach should take the long-term into account.
 intermediate goals and measure your progress. While you do
Set
want a long-term measurement perspective, you also want to de-
fine and track intermediate targets.

11. Strategy Execution is a resident. Constantly changing environ-
ments, customers, competitors and employees require Strategy Exe-
cution to be an ongoing process. It should be institutionalised with-
in the organisation: a permanent activity – part of the organisation’s
culture and DNA – that is driven with persistence and discipline.

“After a business implements a strategy, competitors will react, and
the firm’s strategy will need to adapt to meet the new challenges.
There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle
continues on perpetually. Produce and compete or perish”
– Thomas Timings Holme


12. Strategy Execution is on its way to maturity. Robert Kaplan and
David Norton started a new management revolution in 1992 with
the introduction of their Balanced Scorecard concept.
Originally launched as a new way of measuring strategy, taking
into account other measures rather than merely the ﬁnancial ones,
the Balanced Scorecard quickly became the instrument that made
managers think harder about the implementation of their strategy.
And today, more than a decade later, Strategy Execution has grown
out of its infancy and is on its way to maturity.

The 8 – a unique Strategy Execution framework
Strategy Execution or performance management is a complex process.
In fact, it’s a mix of several processes – and the ideal process picture is
different for each organisation.
But even with a different mix, each best-in-class performance manage-
ment process should include some basic building blocks. Luckily, many of
them are readily available within most organisations. They include:
– Tried and tested approaches for reviewing a strategy.
– Strategy cascade tools, the Balanced Scorecard being the best-known.
– Techniques to structure, execute and monitor strategic projects.
– A proven approach to set, monitor and evaluate individual objectives.
What is lacking however, is a simple framework to integrate and
align all of these different building blocks.
And that’s where the 8 comes in. It combines the most important
building blocks into a coherent image.
The 8 doesn’t cover all of the ins and outs of the Strategy Execution
process. It’s not supposed to. It’s not a rigid step-by-step instruction. But it
does provide a necessary, simple framework for Strategy Execution.
You can make your execution framework more complex if you pre-
fer. For the organisational cycle in particular, there are some sophisticat-
ed models around. Kaplan and Norton describe one in their latest book
The Execution Premium. You can ﬁnd a second one that also includes
organisational structure impacts in Making Strategy Work by Hrebiniak.


While I like the insights that these conceptual models provide, their
complexity makes them unsuitable as a day-to-day Strategy Execution
framework for the whole organisation. I believe a Strategy Execution
framework for all managers and staff needs to be simple, highly recogni-
sable and sexy. (Think like a marketer and make it stick.)
I’m aware that you will lose some of the nuances, but that’s a choice
you need to make. Besides, it doesn’t mean you have to over-simplify
your Strategy Execution process. You can use the 8 for communication
purposes and keep a more detailed version to be known only by those
who have to organise the process.
Not convinced yet?
Here are two ‘content’ arguments:
1. The 8 shows the importance of aligning individual and organisa-
tional performance, one of the most important things you can do
to improve your success rate.
2. The 8 gives initiative management the attention it deserves (read
‘needs’). International research from the performance factory
shows that initiative management is the single most important
execution problem that companies face. In other words, it’s the
place where most performance is lost.
So, if you look for a simple, highly recognisable Strategy Execution
framework that emphasises the link between individual and organisa-
tional performance and gives initiative management the importance it
deserves, go for the 8.


Figure 1. The 8, a unique Strategy Execution framework

Update
 Organisation Level Strategy

Compare Communicate
& Learn & Cascade

Manage
initiatives
 Individual Level

Evaluate Set
Performance Objectives

®
Monitor
& Coach

The 8 – crucial building blocks
Here is an overview of the different building blocks:

1. Review and update your strategy
Your strategy is the long-term action plan designed to achieve your vi-
sion. Depending on the industry you are in, it maps the road your com-
pany should take for the next 3-to-10 years. It’s designed to help you
gain the competitive advantage over your industry peers.
On a regular basis, usually annually, a company needs (and wants) to
update its strategy based on changes in its competitive environment and
on the Strategy Execution feedback from the previous cycle.


The execution framework includes strategy updates as they take
place on a regular, recurring basis at all levels of the organisation. It
excludes the real strategy work, conducted only once every three-to-five
years at the top of an organisation.

2. Communicate
As soon as your strategy (or strategy update) is finalised and approved
by all stakeholders, you should focus on strategy communication. Trans-
parent and easy-to-understand communication creates the necessary
understanding and engagement for the new, adapted strategy.
It is essential to use all available communication platforms. One
big strategy event and a single strategy email are not nearly enough.
Use other meeting platforms, discussion groups, informal and formal
encounters, performance management sessions, intranets, websites,
screensavers, coffee rooms, noticeboards etc. to communicate the strat-
egy. You cannot over-communicate your vision and strategy!
Pay attention to the quality of your strategy communication. Senior
managers as strategy ambassadors, in particular, should be especially
careful about how they communicate. In addition to the content itself,
tone of voice and presentation skills are essential elements in transfer-
ring content and creating the necessary enthusiasm for others to pass
on the message. Make sure you don’t kill your strategy with poor-quali-
ty, uninspiring communication.

3. Cascade
When you cascade your company’s strategy, you break down the objec-
tives into smaller chunks for the next organisational level. The process
stops at the smallest unit level – often teams. In the end, the size of your
organisation will define the size of the cascade.
It is crucial to achieve macro alignment between all the objec-
tives – horizontally and vertically – in your organisation. You can
achieve better alignment by aiming for MECE – Mutually Exclusive
and Collectively Exhaustive. This simply means that everything from
the level below (strategy, initiatives, objectives, etc.) should add up
exactly to the level above, without any overlaps. This may sound logical


and easy, but practice shows that many companies have a difficult
time linking levels correctly.

Performance tip. One of the reasons companies find it hard
to get the macro alignment right is the complex matrix of
responsibilities. Strategy Execution accountabilities are often
blurred and spread across an organisation.
In large organisations, you can have up to 10 different
parties involved, including corporate functions, functional
lines, regional structures and countries. In addition, within
each of these structures, responsibilities are often dispersed
among human resources, finance, the strategy department
and the various leadership teams.
When your macro alignment doesn’t seem to be working,
start by taking a look at the complexity of the Strategy Execu-
tion accountabilities and reduce where possible.

On a micro level, you need to balance your objectives across per-
spectives. The four traditional perspectives are: financial, customer, in-
ternal processes and people. But you can always add other dimensions
as appropriate. The Balanced Scorecard is the best-known method.
In addition to the balancing act on the macro and micro levels, you
need to select the right indicators – often called Key Performance Indi-
cators or KPIs – to track the objectives and define appropriate targets.

4. Compare and learn
Your strategy is a hypothesis. It’s your best estimate of the route to suc-
cess… but it’s still an estimation.
It’s crucial to take some time at the end of a cycle to go back and
check your hypothesis, to compare your initial strategic assumptions
with what you have learnt from the reality of the Strategy Execution
cycle that is being completed. By doing this, you will put yourself
in the forefront – research shows that only 15 percent of companies
take this step.


But at the same time, make sure that you don’t just look at your
strategy: study your Strategy Execution capability as well. All too of-
ten, we see companies jumping automatically to change their strat-
egy because they did not reach their projected performance. But,
upon examination, there is nothing wrong with their strategy. The
problem is the execution. So don’t forget to challenge your imple-
mentation capabilities as well!
This ‘compare and learn’ step will help you verify your hypothesis
(read ‘review your strategy’), update your strategy, and fine-tune your
execution efforts and capabilities accordingly.

5. Manage initiatives
Initiative management is the activity in which your dreams run up against
reality, where your strategy meets operations and where resources are add-
ed to the strategy formula. It’s one of the most difficult Strategy Execution
steps and therefore the point where implementation often goes wrong.
Initiative management is all about selecting, prioritising and execut-
ing the right strategic initiatives: those actions that will lead to the reali-
sation of your strategy.

6. Set objectives
Setting individual objectives is one of the best things you can do to improve
performance – yours, your team’s or even that of an entire organisation.
The positive impact of goal setting is one of the most widely re-
searched and scientifically validated aspects of today’s organisational
science. Two key researchers of goal setting and task motivation theory
are Edwin Locke from the University of Maryland and Gary Latham from
Toronto University.
Link all individual objectives with the overall strategy. If you don’t,
you might end up with great individual objectives … but of no use to
the organisation!
Also, focus on the way you secure agreement on the objectives. It’s
the quality of the objectives – including the link with the overall com-
pany strategy – and the acceptance of these objectives that will make
your individual objective setting a success.


7. Monitor and coach
Regular coaching motivates people and dramatically increases their
chances of success. It also simplifies the final performance evaluation.
In fact, regular coaching is far more important than the formal review
meeting somewhere around the middle of the year.
Providing feedback in the right way – a key coaching skill – is a cru-
cial step in boosting performance.
Performance coaching is a relatively new, but rapidly growing,
knowledge field. The leading authority is Sir John Whitmore, author of
Coaching for Performance and sparring partner for Chapter 5 on coaching.

8. Evaluate performance
Most organisations conduct a formal performance evaluation at the end
of the individual performance management cycle. Ideally, the evaluation
should answer the question: ‘Are the individual performance objectives
achieved?’. Be sure you make an honest assessment. Several techniques
can help you.
Although it’s important to link performance to remuneration, per-
formance evaluation should be a separate process.


The extended 8
Large organisations need several steps to cascade the overall strategy
to the individual level. The cascade runs down through business units,
functional lines, departments and teams.
For communication purposes, it helps to change the visual. Here’s
an example:

Figure 2. The extended 8, an example

Update
 Organisation Level Strategy

Compare Communicate
& Learn & Cascade

Manage
initiatives
 Divisional Level

Compare Communicate
& Learn & Cascade

Manage
initiatives
 Individual Level

Evaluate Set
Performance Objectives

®
Monitor
& Coach


Strategy Execution: your next competitive advantage?
In his best-seller, Jim Collins concludes that strategy doesn’t separate
the good from the great, execution does. Research from Kaplan and
Norton indicates that companies with a formal Strategy Execution sys-
tem have a two-to-three times better chance of success as those who
don’t have such a system.
Strategy Execution is a new, emerging competitive battleﬁeld that
starts to get more and more attention.
Are you a player in the execution game? Or merely sitting on the
sidelines?
Don’t limit yourself to your strategy alone to set yourself apart in
your industry. Bring your Strategy Execution capabilities into play and
turn them into your next competitive advantage.


PERFORMANCE TAKEAWAYS

– Sound Strategy Execution bridges the gap between a great strategy
and great performance.
– Strategy Execution is a vast area with blurred borders; a discipline of its
own, with its proper skill set.
– In comparison to strategy making, it involves everyone, takes much
longer and requires a short- and long-term focus.
– Strategy Execution requires a great strategy to start from and lots
of management attention during the strategy formulation phase. A
company’s culture, power structure, ability to cope with change,
quality of the execution process and skills managers, all inﬂuence
the ability to execute any chosen strategy.
– A Strategy Execution framework orients managers to take the right
actions at the right time.
– The 8 is a simple, visually strong and easy-to-communicate Strategy
Execution framework that combines individual and organisational
performance.
– Thanks to pioneers like Kaplan and Norton and Charan and Bossidy,
Strategy Execution isn’t the black hole it used to be. Today, most
organisations are aware that poor Strategy Execution creates a per-
formance gap.
– So the key question is not if there is a gap but how it will be closed.
– Unfortunately, due to the complexity of this challenge, companies
continue to lose 40-to-60 percent of their strategic potential during
the execution phase.
– Organisations need to start by understanding in more detail where
the Strategy Execution process leaks performance. A benchmark
can help tremendously.
– Strategy Execution offers new chances for creating competitive
advantage. Make sure you are the first in line to fully exploit the
opportunity.


And the answer is? ‘A new mathematical enigma: performance
0+0=8’.
The title refers to individual and organisational performance alignment.
Alone, each cycle doesn’t offer the organisation any value. Connected,
they do.

“In a 4x100-metre relay race, one runner starts before the other,
but in the end it’s the sum of the four runners that
determines performance”


CHAPTER V

Challenge 3:
Coach: Become a
3% member

“The best time to make up your mind about people is never”
– Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story

I n 1999, a tall man walks into a room packed with people. He asks
‘Who wants to be coached?’. Many glance surprisedly at each other.
This isn’t what they had expected.
After a few seconds of complete silence, people respond by raising
their hands. Then the tall man starts asking a series of questions for each
person to answer in silence on paper.
The session took 40 minutes and, at the end, more than 75 percent
of the people in the room answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Have you
been coached?’.
I was in the room that day and… one of that 75 percent. From that
moment on, I became a coaching adept. Our coach, the tall man, was
David Hemery, John’s colleague and the 1968 Olympics 400-metre hur-
dles gold medallist. If you aren’t a coaching fan yet, I hope you will be
after reading this chapter.
Strategy Execution is made up of many, MANY individual execution ef-
forts – an inﬁnite to-do list taken up by different people at different times.

Chapter V - Challenge 3: Coach: Become a 3% member 91

Performance coaching helps this process by creating the necessary com-
mitment with the individuals involved to move these actions forwards. In
other words, coaching creates engagement to get things done.
This chapter provides a clear overview of the key elements of coach-
ing and gives proven tips to upgrade your coaching skills. It will also
provide you with ideas on how coaching can benefit the organisation.

What every performance-oriented manager should
know about coaching
 Coaching is a relatively new field. Although Socrates launched some
of the basic principles of modern coaching some 2000 years ago, it
has only become well-known over the last two decades.
 In these last 20 years, coaching has had a meteoric rise in popular-
ity. Eighty percent of UK organisations are investing in one or more
forms of coaching and the International Coaching Federation is at-
tracting record numbers each month.
 To this day, there is no single agreed upon definition for coaching.
Some are straightforward, others are fancy.
 My favourite coaching definition is by Tim Gallwey, John’s former
business partner and author of several best-selling books on coach-
ing in sport. It goes like this: “Coaching is unlocking a person’s po-
tential to maximise their own performance. It’s helping them to
learn rather than teaching them”.
 Be careful not to mix performance coaching with counselling. Coach-
ing is work-related, proactive and focused on conscious or just below
the surface things. Counselling is a whole different ball game. It’s non-
work-related, rather reactive and concerned with the core beliefs of an
individual. You can do more harm than good by mixing them up.
In his article The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching (Harvard
Business Review), Steve Berglas pinpoints the risks – and unfortunately
– the practice of unschooled coaches who enter into more psychother-
apy issues with their coachee than they can competently handle.
Make sure you do not make the same mistake. If you suspect a
work-related issue has deeper origins, call in a professional with the


necessary skills. If you are on the receiving end, make sure you have a
profile that fits your needs.
 Coaching is all about unlocking future potential performance rather
than evaluating and judging current performance. It’s based on the
belief that individuals want to and can do a good job. If, deep down,
you don’t believe this, coaching is probably not for you.
 Performance coaching is not so much about passing on individual
performance objectives, but rather a technique to take away the bar-
riers that prevent individuals from actually taking on and delivering
against these objectives.
 Coaching is also a way of managing rather than a tool to use in a
variety of situations such as planning, delegation or problem solv-
ing. It’s a different way of viewing people – a far more optimistic way
than most of us are accustomed to – and results in a different way of
treating them.
 There are many coaching methods. The good ones will help you as a
coach to facilitate learning rather than to direct it. Questioning tech-
niques and active listening are your primary means to do this.
 Everybody can become a coach. It’s a skill that requires only time
and effort to develop. It’s probably harder to give up instructing
than it is to learn to coach.
 Most companies today invest in coaching to improve individual per-
formance. But more and more companies realise there is so much
more to gain if they can harvest the individual benefits to improve
the overall company performance.
 There is no single ideal way of measuring the coaching ROI for com-
panies – although many claim to have the best.

Grow Me: Coaching individuals with the best-known
coaching model in the world
There are dozens of coaching methods out there, some better than oth-
ers. The good ones will help you as a coach to facilitate learning rather
than to direct it.


GROW – originally conceived by Graham Alexander and further per-
fected by John – is probably the best-known and appreciated coaching
technique in the world.

The GROW model
G – Goal setting
R – Reality
O – Options
W – Will

Unlike other techniques, it is much more than a toolbox linked to
an acronym. It’s an approach, a philosophy which helps you create the
right context to help individuals transform their potential into peak per-
formance. And I believe that’s exactly the reason for its success.
It’s my objective here to outline the main points. If you would like
to know more, you should get yourself a copy of John’s book Coaching
for Performance.

The essence of good coaching: create awareness and build respon-
sibility with the performer
You can achieve limited success by diligently following the GROW road map
explained in the book. But without subscribing to the underlying coaching
philosophy however, you will fall short of what is truly possible.
The essence of good coaching is all about you, as a coach, helping
your coachee to increase awareness and take responsibility. Of course,
the process is important since it brings structure to the conversation,
but it should not be the cornerstone of your coaching. Creating aware-
ness and responsibility are.
Frame your coaching in the context of awareness and responsibility
and it will improve drastically.

Awareness: collecting high-quality relevant input
Our minds can only process a limited amount of information at the
same time. We have a mechanism in our brain that ﬁlters all incoming


signals and only those considered important come through. It would be
impossible to function without it.
This selection process takes place automatically without any con-
scious effort. You don’t have to do anything. You can however feed your
brain better input and inﬂuence the importance given to certain inputs.
By being aware – or in other words by tuning your senses and engag-
ing your brain – you are in control of the quality of input that your brain
receives and the importance it is given.

So how does this relate to coaching?
Performance coaching aims to increase performance – the output. The
output increases when there’s better input. And you improve input
through awareness.
So if you can help your coachee to increase awareness and thereby
help to collect better input, you dramatically increase the possibility of
increased output. (I will talk about responsibility – the other crucial ele-
ment needed for success – in the next section).
As a coach, you cannot tell someone to become aware. It’s up to
the coachee to direct and engage his brain through focus. By asking the
right questions however, you can facilitate this process.
Let’s do a little exercise on input quality and awareness to make it
more concrete. I will be your coach.
Here is your assignment. I would like you to have an animated, mu-
tually interesting discussion with someone about coaching and Strategy
Execution within the next three days.
To do this, you will need to identify the person and have a conversa-
tion about the coaching. The better you manage the input – in this case
the choice of the individual and the content preparation – the more
chance you will have of reaching the objective – that is, having a mutu-
ally interesting discussion with someone about coaching and Strategy
Execution in the next three days.
I could tell you to select the best possible candidate or to read
this chapter twice in order to get a good grasp of what coaching is all
about… but I will not raise your input quality and therefore will have no
impact on your success.


In order to help you, I need to increase your awareness.
Let’s see if I can do that by asking you some questions. It would be
great if you could write the answers down.
– Who would be the five people that could be interested in know-
ing more about coaching?
– On what page do you find information about coaching that gets
you excited?
– What would be the best way to also get one or more of the five
people you identified excited?
– How do you find out what they would like to learn about coaching?
– What other chapters could help you prepare?
– In what way can you use this book to get the conversation about
coaching started?
These questions make you think and automatically engage you in
the exercise. If you have taken the time to reflect on each question, you
should have a much better idea as to who to talk to (one crucial input
element) as well as some ideas on what you want to talk about (the
other crucial input element).
So by asking you these questions, I have hopefully enabled you to
raise your awareness and facilitated the collection of better quality input
for the assignment.
One final remark: besides awareness, there’s also self-awareness. If
awareness is ‘knowing what is happening around you’, self-awareness is
‘knowing what you are experiencing at this moment’. It’s another brain
and body process that you have at your disposal to collect valuable input.

Performance tip. You might also want to explore self-coach-
ing. Sport activities are a great place to start. If you are into
tennis, skiing or golf, you could get yourself one of the series
of Tim Gallwey books, The Inner Game of…
It’s great and fun to read.
I’ve improved my skiing tremendously and picked up new
angles on coaching at the same time.


So what are you experiencing at the moment? Still thinking about
the exercise? Enthusiastic to have those discussions? Hungry (one has to
eat)? Curious to read on?
This auto-feedback – available for you at all times – helps you take
better decisions.
So take a moment to evaluate the input signals from your brain and
body, read on, continue to work on your assignment… or grab some-
thing to eat!

Responsibility: the performer’s choice to take ownership
Responsibility is the second important performance coaching concept. When
you truly accept responsibility for your thoughts and actions, you will raise
your commitment to them. And this inevitably leads to better performance.
Your performance will not improve when you are ordered or ex-
pected to be responsible – or even if you are given responsibility. You
might do the job to avoid an implied threat or punishment but your
performance is unlikely to be optimised.
So what do you require to create responsibility?
You need to have a choice. And with choice comes responsibility.
Let’s return to your assignment. Imagine for one moment that the
person you talk to doesn’t react as enthusiastically as you had hoped.
Who will you blame?
Me probably, as I asked you to take action. This illustrates where you
currently see the responsibility lying. As long as you blame someone
else, there is no real sense of ownership.
As a coach, by asking questions, I can help you with the reﬂection
process but the ﬁnal decision is up to you. It always is, even if that
choice is to take no action.
So, to conclude, merely telling someone to be responsible for some-
thing does not make them feel responsible. That comes with choice.
Offering choice is a fantastic trigger for responsibility.
So, it’s up to you. Please decide if, and how, you want to take the
assignment further. And if you choose to do so, please let me know the
result. I would appreciate the feedback.


Ask the right questions, in the right order and… listen to the
responses
You know now that the best way to develop and maintain the ideal state
of mind for performance is to build awareness and responsibility. They
are the two key elements that your coaching should focus on.
Asking questions – rather than telling – is the best way to mentally
engage your coachee. And as you are looking for the highest possible
engagement from your coachee, asking questions therefore becomes
your most important means of communication.
‘But what questions do I ask?’ might be the next question on your mind.
Well, your questions need to evoke awareness and responsibility
with your coachee. Random questioning will not work.
Effective questioning can be broken down into two parts: asking the
right questions and asking them in the right order. For the former, have
a look at tips in the next section. Several of them will help you to ask the
right questions. I will explain the questioning order below.

Performance download 11. High-quality coaching
questions – examples.

But before I move on to the sequencing framework for questioning,
let me point out one other crucial point.
Interact!
Yes, that’s it. Interact. Coaching is like dancing the salsa: one person
leads but the dance evolves due to the interaction between the two
dancers. This makes each dance unique, even if you always dance with
the same partner.
Coaching is the same. Each coaching session, whether formal or informal,
is unique, even if the coachee is the same. It’s all about human interaction.
So, as a coach, you should be leading the overall conversation while
expecting interaction. A good coach will follow the coachee’s chain of
thought while also monitoring how that relates to the overall subject
and coaching process.


A good coach switches off the autopilot. Be flexible and respond
to the coachee’s verbal and non-verbal communication of the coachee.
The better you are engaged, the easier it is to react.
One way to engage yourself further is to listen to yourself. Not in a
bizarre way, but by being self-aware.
In the back of your mind, ask yourself these questions: ‘How am I
reacting?’, ‘Am I judging?’, ‘Am I leaning forwards or backwards?’ or ‘Am
I trying to find a solution myself?’. This questioning will keep your mind
on the game and increase your awareness. It demands, as with all skills,
some practice to do everything simultaneously. But in the end, it will
make you a far better coach.

A sequencing framework for your questions – GROW
The GROW coaching model offers the coach a simple, yet powerful,
framework. It helps you to structure your interaction with your coachee.
When the coaching is formal, always start with the first stage, even
when you cannot precisely define the goal. You can always return to
the first stage when both of you have gained more insight from the
other stages.
When the coaching is informal, it’s usually a good idea to initially fol-
low the coachee’s lead by asking a few questions to trigger more detail,
than move into the sequence.
The conversation can start at any one of the four stages of the GROW
model. A coachee might begin by telling you about something s/he wants
to achieve (Goal), a current problem (Reality), a new idea for improving
things (Options) or by outlining an action plan (Will).
By itself, the particular order of questions will not help you to
become a great coach. Each question should aim to increase your
coachee’s awareness and responsibility. It’s the combination of con-
text and sequence, along with lots of practice, that will make you a
better coach.

G for Goal setting: define the short- and long-term goals
The most important part of the first coaching phase is to define and agree
upon one or more goals that the coachee wishes to achieve. Ideally, you


should establish a clear goal for the coaching session itself and a long-
term performance goal.
Make sure that you and your coachee know what the objective of
your conversation is, even when you are coaching informally. It’s impor-
tant to give value and direction to any discussion.
There’s a whole chapter on individual objective setting, as it is not
only a crucial stage for performance coaching but for Strategy Execu-
tion in general. Goal setting is one of the most researched elements in
organisational science. I believe every good coach needs a solid under-
standing of the topic that goes beyond knowing what SMART stands for.
For more information, see Chapter 3.

R for Reality: explore the current situation
The most important criterion for examining the current situation is
objectivity. Most people think they are objective but in reality they
are not. Nobody is. Absolute objectivity doesn’t exist. We can only
have partial objectivity.
There are many things that can and will cloud your, and your
coachee’s objectivity including opinions, expectations, fear and preju-
dices. But the more we aim to be objective, the more we will be.
So it’s your challenge to come as close as possible to reality, by-pass-
ing as many distortions as possible. As a coach, you should help your
coachee to remove as many false assumptions as possible.
Explore the real nature of the problem by asking your coachee to
describe their perceived current reality. This is an important step. Too
often, people try to solve a problem without fully considering their
starting point – and often they are missing some of the information they
need to solve the problem effectively. All too often, as your coachee tells
you about his current Reality, the solution starts to emerge.

O for Options: identify and evaluate different action strategies
Once you and your coachee have explored the current reality, it’s time
to explore what is possible – meaning all the potential options, behav-
iour or decisions that could lead to the right solution.
Help your coachee to generate a long list. Your objective as a coach


during the Options stage should not be to ﬁnd the right answer, but to help
your coachee identify as many different ideas and solutions as possible. You
don’t want any obstacles like preferences, feasibility or need for complete-
ness blocking the brainstorming process. At this point in the process, it’s
the ideation – the creative part – that provides the real value.
So, as strange as it may seem, focus on quantity rather than quality
and feasibility. It’s from this long inventory of creative possibilities that
actions will be chosen during the next stage.

W for Will: what will you do by when?
The purpose of this ﬁnal phase is to transform a discussion into a deci-
sion, using the outcomes of the three previous coaching steps. Again,
you will be guiding your coachee through a series of questions.
By examining the current Reality and exploring the Options, your
coachee will now have a good idea of how s/he can achieve their goal.
That’s great, but without ownership to kick-start and drive future actions,
it has no value. So you need to help your coachee to take responsibil-
ity and commit to action. As you want to maximise chances for success,
you need to examine any potential obstacles, discuss ways of overcoming
them, agree on the resources needed and the nature of further support.
So, the fourth phase demands that the coachee takes several decisions.
Remember: the coachee takes the decision, even if that decision is to take
no action at all. The coachee always maintains choice and ownership.

Thirty tips to become a better performance coach
Now that you have learnt the art of questioning within the context of
awareness and responsibility, here are some practical coaching tips to
boost your coaching.
There is no one way of coaching all individuals in all situations. The
list below is therefore incomplete and even has some contradictory tips.
But they have all been tested and will be useful for you as a coach some-
where along your growth path.
You might want to read a section at a time, highlighting or taking
notes as you go through them.


As your coaching evolves, so will your needs for further develop-
ment. It might therefore be a good idea to run through this list every
few months. You will see that, after some time, certain tips will hold
no mystery for you anymore and others will attract your attention and
reveal different nuances over time.

Performance download 12. Select the right coaching tips
– a checklist.

1. Ask open questions. Asking closed questions (read ‘questions with
yes/no answer’) prevents people from thinking. Asking open ques-
tions causes them to think for themselves.

2. Make your coachee think. Ask open questions that demand your
coachee to focus more than usual to give accurate answers.
Here’s an example: ‘Can you summarise in three headlines the added
value of awareness and responsibility for your coaching activities in the
future?’ rather than ‘What do you remember from the previous chapter?’.

3. Don’t be judgemental. Ask open questions that demand descrip-
tive, non-judgemental answers. This way, you avoid causing self-crit-
icism or damaging your coachee’s self-esteem.

4. Resist the Why? question. Asking why often implies criticism and trig-
gers the coachee’s analytical thinking process. And analysis (thinking)
and awareness (observing) are two different mental processes that are
virtually impossible to combine to full effect.
So aim for questions that start with words such as what, when,
who, how much and how many.

5. Keep it short. Make your coaching questions clear and unambigu-
ous. It helps when you limit yourself to one brief question. And lis-
ten for the response before launching a new question.

6. Go on a trip. A useful metaphor for the GROW model is the plan
you might make for an important journey. First, you start with a map


that helps your coachee decide where they are going (their Goal)
and establish where they currently are (their current Reality). Then
you explore various ways (the Options) of making the journey. In
the final step, establishing the Will, you ensure your coachee is com-
mitted to making the journey.

7. Go undercover. You don’t need a formal coaching session to raise
someone’s awareness and responsibility. In fact, most coaching
takes place unsolicited, with the coachee unaware of the process.
The coached individual will simply think that you were being par-
ticularly helpful and considerate. This means that every conversation
you have becomes a potential testing ground – a learning experience
– to improve your coaching skills.

8. Ask for, and be open to feedback. Everybody learns, even the
best coaches. So do ask for feedback from your coachee. Besides the
positive learning experience for you, it has the extra benefit for im-
proving the relationship. You increase the chances that your coachee
will be more open to feedback when s/he is next on the receiving
end as feedback is becoming part of the way you interact.

9. Set goals at the start with a self-evaluation form. I have men-
tioned before how important it is to begin the coaching process, for-
mal or informal, with a clear definition of what your coachee would
like to achieve. Using a self-evaluation form helps this process tre-
mendously. There are many lists on the internet, or if you can’t find
one that suits your needs, build one. With as few as 10 questions you
can offer your coachee your first added value.

10. Don’t let the good guys get away. When coaching for performance,
you aim to improve certain performance shortcomings of your coachee.
But remember, it’s not all bad all of the time. I’m sure you can find sev-
eral good, even great, behaviours that your coachee possesses.
But without the proper attention, s/he might not be aware of them,
or even worse, adds them to the list of behaviours that need to change.


Make sure you identify those positive behaviours and help your
coachee leverage them. It’s a great way to stress the positive and help
your coachee reach goals faster by building on existing strengths at
the same time.

11. Coach only on first-hand data. When you know the coachee, you
probably have more information available. You might, for example,
have heard something from a colleague.
And I know it’s tempting to use that information, but be aware
that using it will often have a negative impact on your coaching rela-
tionship – whether the information is correct or not.
So stick to what you hear directly from your coachee.

12. Dig deeper. Ask your coachee open questions that will make him
reflect. You should be able to detect it from their body language such
as a pause before answering or a raising of the eyes.
When you ask questions solely from the normal, conscious level of
awareness, you may be helping your coachee to structure his thoughts
but you are not probing for deeper levels of awareness.
But when your coachee has to really dig deep to find the answer,
new awareness is created. And once found, the input becomes con-
scious and readily available for the coachee to use.

13. Coach or tell? Whether or not to opt for a coaching approach de-
pends on your situation at a given moment. If timing is the most
important criterion in a specific situation, such as in a crisis, doing
the job yourself or telling someone exactly what to do is probably
your best option. If quality matters most, you will get the best results
with coaching for high awareness and responsibility. If learning and
retention are crucial, coaching is again your best choice.

14. Before you start, ask yourself what you want to get out of it.
Don’t confuse or fool yourself by pretending to coach when you are
actually doing something different. If you want to teach, then go and
teach. If you want to sell, then do so. But don’t use coaching as a


means to something other than for what it is intended. It might give
you the desired outcome in the short-term but will always backﬁre
and create more problems at a later stage.

15. Understand what makes people tick. There is no need to com-
plete a psychology degree before you can start coaching. But as
coaching is all about human interaction, it’s useful to have a basic
understanding of what drives human behaviour.

16. Use homework. It gives your coachee more time to collect high-
quality input and creates responsibility. And it will give you more
coaching time and a solid starting base for your next session.

17. Delegate coaching. Evaluate carefully the amount of time you al-
locate to coaching. In some situations you can delegate particular
coaching jobs to others.

18. Coach the coach. When delegating a coaching job to someone else,
you are stimulating that individual to apply and build their own
coaching skills. It further enriches your own coaching practice as
you are approaching coaching from a new perspective.
Even after years of coaching, I still ﬁnd it refreshing and rewarding
to coach coaches.

19. Don’t feel guilty about providing input. Just because you read
somewhere that a coach should not delve into the content, doesn’t
mean that you can’t provide some input. You just need to be careful
with your timing and delivery method.
A good time to offer your knowledge or experience is when you
recognise that the coachee has exhausted all possibilities during the
Option phase – the ‘O’ from GROW .
Ask the following question: ‘I have some more options and ideas.
Maybe you would like to hear them?’ You can style the question to
your liking, but do make sure that it’s clear to your coachee that you
are momentarily stepping out of your facilitating role.
When providing your input, make it as short as possible. Try


to put it all into one phrase. You don’t want to be talking for the
next 10 minutes.
If you have more then one session and know the topic, you can
write your tips on paper and get a feeling for the tone and directness
of the message.
Remember to make it clear to your coachee that your input should
be treated in the same way as his/her own options and ideas.

20. When you don’t know the answer, admit it. A no-nonsense ap-
proach will help your build a relationship of trust. It is extremely
damaging to that relationship to go back on something that you sup-
ported during a previous session. If you don’t have the answer, say
so and offer to find it by the next session or possibly earlier.

21. Two might be better than one. You may find it easier to coach two
people at the same time. It might sound strange as, like most people,
you probably have the image of coaching as a strictly one-to-one pro-
cess. But it’s rewarding to look beyond that preconception.
I found that coaching two people at the same time can reduce ten-
sion and provide a great opportunity for role-playing.

22. Describe versus evaluate. You should use, and encourage your
coachee to use descriptive, rather than evaluative words. The
more specific and descriptive words and phrases become, the less
criticism they tend to carry, and the more productive the coaching
will be.
So don’t just tell a speaker his presentation was poor or inade-
quate – this will only make him feel bad. He wants to know that the
presentation was clearly structured, brief but rather monotonous and
pitched at too low a level for the audience.
Remember that description adds value, criticism detracts.

23. Coach your boss. You probably won’t get very far by telling your
boss what to do. But applying some of the coaching principles and
coaching upwards can increase your success rate dramatically.


24. Go back and forth. The GROW methodology helps you structure
your coaching conversation. It gives a proven, logical sequence to
your questions.
But even though there is a sequence, you need to go back and
forth between the different steps.
You might start with a vague Goal that only becomes clear after ex-
amining the Reality in some detail. It will then be necessary to go back
and define the Goal more precisely before moving to the Options.
Even a clearly defined Goal might prove itself wrong or inappropriate
once the Reality is clear.
Similarly, when listing the Options, it’s important to check back if
they help to move towards the desired Goal or not.
And finally, before the Will is finalised, it’s crucial to see if the ac-
tion plan, once realised, achieves the Goal.

25. Don’t over prepare. Too much preparation destroys your flexibil-
ity. Develop a general road map for your next session rather than a
detailed, step-by-step instruction manual.

26. Build your communication skills. These are crucial. Coaching
is all about human interaction. Make sure you master a basic com-
munication model. It’s better to have a thorough understanding
of one model that you can actually apply in practice rather than
have only a theoretical background on a few of them. Chapter 4
can help.

27. Don’t strive to put everything into a single session. If your
coachee is motivated for the next session, it’s often a first sign that
something positive has been put in motion.

28. Just do it. Often your coachee will say something like ‘When I start-
ed the presentation I gave a short introduction. Then it all blocked’.
Instead of talking about something, I often find it useful to ask the
coachee to replay a certain situation. It makes it more concrete and
offers a great opportunity to test out some of the Options.


When your coachee is able to do a successful role play exercise,
the motivation, self-belief and learning curve receive a huge boost.

29. Provide quick and easy feedback. Here’s a simple but effective
feedback method you can use all the time. It’s called LCS – which
stands for Like, Concern, Suggestion.
Start by saying something you liked, then add your concern and
end with one or more suggestions. Here’s an example: ‘I’m happy you
have almost finished reading all these tips. But by only reading them,
I’m concerned it will not boost your coaching skills as it is more im-
portant to actually put them into practice. So I would suggest picking
your three favourite ones and thinking about how you could use them
in the assignment I gave you earlier’.

30. Everything your coachee says is important. It’s your job to find
out how it is important.

Grow Us: Coaching from a company perspective
What would happen if all managers in your organisation integrated coach-
ing in their day-to-day behaviour in a consistent and qualitative way?
The benefits would be enormous, wouldn’t you agree?
But you’ll probably also agree that, while the benefits would be
enormous, the road to get there might be quite long and prove to
be a real challenge. Even though coaching has seen a great boost,
it is still very much seen and used as an individual development
intervention.
Let’s be very clear. Coaching on an individual basis offers many ben-
efits but there’s a next step your organisation can take. And this step can
really boost your Strategy Execution. But to reap those benefits, coach-
ing needs to evolve from individual performance coaching to collective
performance coaching.
You achieve this by introducing the coaching principles into the man-
agement style of all managers. In other words, coaching as your organisa-
tion’s predominant management style. The ‘manager as a coach’ who helps


colleagues remove individual barriers to facilitate strategy implementation.
In the next section, you will discover five actions that will help your
organisation transform into a coaching company.

Five actions to take coaching to the next level in your
organisation
Here are five interventions that you as a manager can take to help your
organisation take coaching to the next level.

Action 1: Develop and communicate a shared vision on coaching
As I have said before, there is no single, agreed upon, clear coaching
definition. When you look closely at what people in your organisation
mean by the word ‘coaching’, you will surely find a wide variety of defi-
nitions and approaches.
Take some time to collect these different ideas, definitions and mod-
els that exist in your organisation. Select the one you consider to fit best
with your organisation or merge the best ones.
Remember to keep it simple and focused on what’s important – the
context of responsibility and awareness.
Once you have an agreement on the overall coaching framework
and definition, your next challenge is to communicate it. You can pick
up some tips and advice from Chapter 4.

Action 2: Create a coaching culture
The old ‘carrot and stick’ management style is past its prime. More and
more companies realise people perform better when they take on re-
sponsibility because they want to and not because they have to.
It’s a growth path for each individual, and the company as a whole,
to move from hierarchy to self-responsibility – from a one-way street to
a two-way communication highway.
This transition doesn’t happen overnight.
In their book Coaching, Mentoring and Organisational Consul-
tancy, Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith describe the seven different
stages in the evolution of a coaching culture. They can help you


identify where your company is at today and give you an idea on the
next steps to aim for.
Here they are:
– Stage 1. The organisation employs coaches for some of its executives.
– Stage 2. The organisation develops its own coaching and mentor-
ing capacity.
– Stage 3. The organisation actively supports coaching endeavours.
– Stage 4. Coaching is a norm for individuals, teams and the whole
organisation.
– Stage 5. Coaching is embedded in the HR and performance man-
agement processes of the organisation.
– Stage 6. Coaching is the predominant style of managing through-
out the organisation.
– Stage 7. Coaching is ‘how we do business’ with all our stakeholders.

Action 3: Understand and solve the drama triangle
Coaching is, in most cases, a conversation between two people, a one-
on-one human interaction. But the beneﬁts shouldn’t be limited to
those two people in the room. Coaching should add value for the or-
ganisation as well.
This creates the need for a three-way partnership between the
organisation, the coachee and the coach. This desired partnership
is often called the drama triangle – with the coachee being identi-
fied as the victim, the organisation as the persecutor and the coach
as the rescuer – as it provides a major challenge to get to a win-win
situation.
Be aware of this challenge and discuss it with your colleagues. There
are several actions you can take to solve or reduce these tensions. Here
are some of them:
– Make sure coaching is not just a nice to have for some key execu-
tives but rather a cornerstone of your development approach.
– Organise regular joint meetings with internal and external coaches.
– Focus coaching expenditure on those areas where it can make an
organisational difference.


– Develop metrics to measure the coaching added value for the
organisation.

Action 4: Implement a coaching development platform
Coaching is a skill that anyone can learn. It just requires time, effort
and some persistence. If your organisation is serious about coach-
ing, it’s a good idea to have a structured development approach – a
coaching development platform. Have a look at Chapter 7 for a de-
tailed explanation.

Action 5: Coach the coach
If you want people to learn and apply coaching, use a coaching ap-
proach. I have found that being coached to learn coaching is a great way
to progress quickly.
And once you reach a certain maturity, coaching others on coaching
gives your learning curve yet another great boost.
It might be helpful to have a coach-the-coach programme institu-
tionalised in your organisation.

A view on Strategy Execution by Douglas Johnson-
Poensgen, Vice President Business Development, BT
What do you consider to be the most important Strategy
Execution challenge for an executive team?
I believe a top team has quite a few crucial execution challenges. Here’s
my list:

Change the shape of the boat. When you choose a new strategy,
you need to change the way you work. Or in other words, a new
strategy demands, in most cases, a different operating model. The
boat that got you to your current destination most probably won’t
get you to the next one. This means that the challenge for an
executive is not only to think about the next destination and the
journey ahead, but also to make sure that the boat is capable of
making the desired trip.


Don’t rock the boat too much. Changing an organisation de-
mands a thoughtful approach. It requires a careful balance be-
tween enough movement to get things moving forwards and
too much movement to make the boat tip over and sink. It’s
the job of the executive team to trim the boat (read ‘organisa-
tion’) in such a way that the speed is there, but not enough to
tip it over. And this demands a great deal of execution experi-
ence, a thorough knowledge of the organisation and a solid
execution plan.

Make clear choices. A diversified business can increase stability of
income. While some businesses get into trouble in certain market
conditions, others thrive. The levelling between generates cash
flow stability. But a diversified business tremendously increases
the execution complexity. The ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t
apply anymore. Just think about the IT challenges and I’m sure
you will know what I mean.
So, while at first sight, from a strategic perspective, diversifica-
tion seems a simple choice, taking the execution challenges into
consideration makes it much more difficult. So when executives
think about a new strategic direction, they need to take into ac-
count the execution challenges that create choice. This needs to
happen right at the start.

Engage your people. Engagement doesn’t come by itself. It de-
mands hard work. And I believe an executive team has two fo-
cus areas to create that important employee engagement. The
first thing the executive team needs to focus on is translating
the complex strategy into an easy story: one that is simple and
compelling and captures the essence of the new direction of
the organisation.
Secondly, the story needs to come to life. And this only
works through visible leadership. Leaders should be in the
front row, set the example and invest lots of time involving the
rest of the organisation.


Kill perverse incentive systems. In order to implement your strat-
egy, you want your people to behave in a certain way. It’s cru-
cial that your incentive systems reinforce the good behaviour and
punish the bad ones, and not vice versa. Let me give you an ex-
ample. If you want to excel in customer service, you don’t want
to reward your sales people on revenues alone, as they will be
tempted to undersell and accept whatever the customer wants.
Easy acceptance by the sales team creates delivery problems at a
later stage. By rewarding the sales team based on gross margin
results, they will be less tempted to undersell and motivated to
involve the delivery team to check if the solution requested is ac-
tually feasible. Bring realism into the sales process.

Avoid complex financial transfer mechanisms. There are quite
a few organisations that have their own currency, just like in
Monopoly. But unlike the game, the complex financial transfer
mechanisms demand an army of accountants to track the internal
financial streams.
And while these financial streams can have a positive impact
on the sense of ownership, transfer mechanisms are often a
heavy burden for the organisation. The issues – extra work and
turf wars – quickly outweigh the benefits. I would advise on
keeping the internal trading to a minimum, especially below the
business unit level.

What Strategy Execution advice would you give to an ambitious
manager?
1. Don’t ever forget the customer. Your company exists thanks to your
customers. Make sure you keep them at the centre of all your actions.

2. Get external input. The world doesn’t stop at your company door.
Make sure you keep a broad scope by finding out what other compa-
nies are doing, collecting best practices, following industry leaders’
current thinking and reading books.


3. Make a difference. Be like FedEx: ‘No matter how hard the chal-
lenge, we make sure we deliver’. Become known as a manager who
makes things happen and delivers against his/her promises. Start
building your execution reputation early in your career. Too many
managers lose precious time working on their ‘talking’ skills but for-
get the delivery part. While this might work in the short run, it’s
deadly in the long-term.

4. Value people who make a difference. This builds on the previous
tip. While being focused on high-quality delivery, learn to identify
others with the same skills and focus. Build a network of people who
get things done. Try to get those proﬁles into your team and make
sure you reward them appropriately.

5. Build thinking and action skills. Don’t stick to one silo on your
way to the top. Make sure you regularly shift between ‘strategy’-ori-
ented jobs – like strategic planner and ‘execution’-driven functions
– such as sales or operations. You will never gain those valuable
‘crossover’ insights if you stick to one lane.

6. Practice visible leadership. Visible leadership is key to creating
engagement to move things forwards. For some, it comes naturally
but most of us have to learn it on the job. Start your practice early
and reﬁne it along the way. It’s a great skill that will serve you well
throughout your career but especially when you reach the senior
level in the organisation.

7. Always remember the 1/3 rule. This might be my most impor-
tant advice. Let me explain my point with an example. Imagine
you have one year to turn a business around. You don’t want to
spend more than 33 percent of your time on the strategy and
planning phase. So without any further planning, you know when
you should start the execution phase. This approach ensures that
there is enough time available for executing the great ideas and
avoids analysis paralysis.


Based on your experience, what’s a classic Strategy Execution
mistake?
The biggest execution problem is actually a strategy problem. Great ex-
ecution can only be built on a great strategy. Without a great strategy,
there will be never a great execution. You need to make certain that the
starting point is okay. This requires making quite a few tough choices.
One typical error is to get going without having made these crucial deci-
sions in the hope that they will get clearer down the road during imple-
mentation. But they never do. And by that point, it will be too late.

Looking at Strategy Execution from a ‘business development’
point of view, what is the most important topic for you?
I would call the most important topic ‘free the entrepreneur’. And I
believe it’s a crucial one for everyone in the organisation, not only busi-
ness development.
I learnt in the army that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
This means that you can spend all the time and money in the world on
planning as changes will always be necessary. But the key point is that
when certain parts of the plan don’t work as intended, it’s up to the
people in the field to look for alternatives in order to win.
Organisations spend much time and money on making the best pos-
sible plans. And you know upfront that not everything will go accord-
ing to plan. But you do want your employees to take on the execution
responsibility, to take ownership for delivering the strategy. And when
something doesn’t go as planned, to look for alternatives in order to get
the job done.
It’s important to define clear flexibility guidelines – you don’t want
everyone running around in all directions, but within these guidelines
you need employees to focus on the overall intent and think like entre-
preneurs.


PERFORMANCE TAKEAWAYS

– Coaching is a great skill to boost Strategy Execution. It helps re-
move performance barriers and creates action engagement to take
the strategy forwards.
– Coaching is a skill, a technique, that everyone can learn with prac-
tice and persistence. There’s only five percent theory, the other 95
percent is practice.
– Your main objective is to raise your coachee’s awareness and re-
sponsibility.
– Questioning is your main instrument to achieve the above.
– The order in which you pose your questions is important. The
GROW model helps you to get the sequence right.
– The GROW coaching model offers the coach a simple, yet powerful,
framework. It helps you to structure your interaction with your coachee.
 for Goal setting: define the short- and long-term goals.
G
 for Reality: explore the current situation.
R
 for Options: identify and evaluate different action strategies.
O
 for Will: what will you do by when?
W
– Ask the right questions, in the right order and… listen to the responses.
– Coaching is also a way of managing.
– There is no one way of coaching all individuals in all situations.
– To get the most out of coaching for your organisation, you need to
work on moving from individual performance coaching to collective
performance coaching. Focus on the following five actions:
 Action 1: Develop and communicate a shared vision on coaching.
 Action 2: Create a coaching culture.
 Action 3: Understand and solve the drama triangle.
 Action 4: Implement a coaching development platform.
 Action 5: Coach the coach.
– If there is one point you should remember, it’s to ask the right ques-
tions to raise awareness and responsibility.


And the answer is? ‘Coach: Become a 3% member’.
A few years ago, I participated in a large research project. One of the
most notable conclusions was that managers believed themselves to be
poor coaches. Only three percent believed themselves to be excellent.
The result was quite striking, not only because of the low number, but
because the same group of managers was far more positive about other
skills such as decision taking and strategy development.


Strategy Execution Heroes Intro Ch1 Ch5

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Strategy Execution Heroes Intro Ch1 Ch5