Strategy Execution has been evolving over time as management teams constantly seek better ways to improve their organization's performance. Because the body of knowledge surrounding formal strategy execution is in its infancy, managers have traditionally resorted to informal practices they hope will modify their organization's behavior in an attempt to achieve their strategic plans.

The first challenge for the management team of any organization is developing a viable strategy. Remember that a viable strategy is concisely defined, within the organization's core competencies and achievable based on their available resources. Let's assume that our organization has developed a viable strategy and is now focused on the best method to achieve it.

In the absence of a formal strategy execution process, managers have deployed numerous Seat-Of-the-Pants (SOP) methods to change their organization's behavior in support of achieving their strategy. Certainly one key to every manager's success is their ability to identify, hire, train, and retain key associates. Larger organizations require larger teams working together to achieve their strategy. Larger organizations typically have more challenging strategies, but also deploy more resources to achieve them. The challenge to have the right teams in place is directly proportional to the size of the organization.

Charismatic managers have an appreciable advantage over others. A charismatic manager has the innate ability to succeed by motivating their staff to perform above and beyond the normal call of duty. However, a charismatic manager is still inferior to a manager that is capable of leading their team to achieve superior results. Superior results will supercharge any manager's career and develop a highly motivated team that is willing to take on new and more difficult challenges.

In the absence of a formal strategy execution process managers have historically focused on other motivational methods to rally their teams to achieve success. Just as societies have evolved over time to become more civilized, so have the motivational methods used by managers to change their team's behaviors.

Originally, managers used fear as a very effective motivation method. Fear could consist of physical, emotional or financial threats that motivated an individual to change their behavior. Fear was supplanted by persuasion. Persuasion was more civilized than fear, but still hinged on negative reinforcement. Incentive finally supplanted persuasion by focusing on positive rewards in exchange for individuals that demonstrated the desired behaviors.

Contemporary managers today still use some combination of fear, persuasion and incentive to rally their teams in support of their organization's strategic plans. Achieving consistent results from managers that randomly select these evolving motivation methods is impossible.

Evolving to a formal strategy execution process is the only way to achieve predictable strategic results. A manager's ability to know when fear, persuasion and/or incentive should be used as motivational methods to change an associate's behavior is still important. However, No Excuses Strategy Execution depends on holding every associate in an organization accountable for achieving individual results.

Seeking a better understanding how societies and motivational methods have evolved over time helps explain some of the symptomatic problems that widen an organizations Strategy Execution Gap. Developing a better understanding how the formal strategy execution process eliminates excuses, closes the Strategy Execution Gap and leads organizations from their vision to reality is the next logical step and remains our ultimate goal.