Strategy vs Execution

I would start with my favorite quote from Morris Chang " Without strategy execution is Aimless, without execution strategy is pointless"

Most of the time certain organizations fail while this vision and execution are not getting married well. Because both professions will debate with each other with their pros and cons. I would like to share my experience of this strategy and execution part by way of taking certain Project Implementations that I worked with.

As part of my professional career and along with the support of my employer's wherever I associate so far, I have been given an opportunity of handling both Presales & Delivery roles and sometimes I used to request for this dual role for the benefit of the project outcomes. That means from Architecting the solution to delivering the same to the customer is my accountability. This gives me a wonderful experience and delightful insights that if this strategy and execution are marrying each other how effectively the solution can be delivered and exceed the expectation of the customer.

When I started with the digital transformation project for one of my customers in the recent past from presales, we strategized to focus on AI's, BOTs & process automation. As we approached our customers and tried to convince them to adopt these technologies, we got a significant push back saying – ‘It may not be for their nature of business, ‘Our current process is good enough - we don’t need certain of this automation’ & so on.

To overcome this I started working on the impact of these technologies with their customer experience and business with the clear simulation and its execution plan for both external and internal buy-in. Along with a couple of my team support, we went to the whiteboards to articulate the impact of these technologies on customer experience. Upon creating those details, we reached out to the customer back and the moment we revealed the clear simulation of the execution, the customer started liking our idea and later that idea opened up wide opportunities for further enhancements. Also, it's most important to have the hand holding of such projects from presales to execution, as it always matters to the customer what they see as a final outcome rather than what they saw in the PPT or doc version. As I contemplate today what worked- it was the superb execution of the plan by the teams on the ground and the conviction of the impact they are going to make on the customer’s business.

With this example, I wanted to recall another interesting quote from Thomas Edison "Vision without execution is hallucination".

To taste real satisfactory success, it's best to have a way for execution rather than just strategizing.

I take this opportunity to thank my team and managers who supported this.