Filling Execution Gaps: How Executives and Project Managers Turn Corporate Strategy into Successful Projects

Gaps in your organization inhibit its ability to implement strategic plans. Daily, executives, middle managers, and project managers wrestle with the big six –executive sponsorship, alignment, change management, governance, leadership, and common understanding. Improperly addressing any of these gaps will hex any project. They regularly destroy hundreds of companies’ ability to turn their corporate vision into business value. Filling the Gaps between Strategy and Project Execution addresses the sources of these gaps, and how to fill them. Absence of an organization-wide understanding of goals and the value connoting success undermines communication. Projects fail and goals are missed. Without change management, adoption suffers. Value is lost, projects fail, and goals are missed. Absence of vertical and horizontal alignment degrades teams and confuses targets. Projects fail, and goals are missed. Poorly engaged executive sponsors allow scope to creep and goals to drift. Chaos reigns, value is lost, projects fail, and goals are missed. Insufficient governance impedes creating critical connections. Steps are skipped, value is overlooked, projects fail, and goals are missed. Excessive governance slows progress, lengthens customer and business response time. Value drowns in bureaucracy, projects fail, and goals are missed. Lastly, weak leadership is unable to define vision and value and guide the customer. Teams founder, decisions languish, projects fail, and goals are missed. Using decades of experience, years of research, and interviews with hundreds of business leaders, the author illustrates how to tackle these problems, meet corporate goals, and increase value.