The Ultimate

Playbook
for Strategy
Implementation
Table of contents

Introduction �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3

What exactly is “strategy”? ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3

1. Clearly defined, long-term vision �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������3

2. Create tangible value�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3

3. Mobilize your workforce to implement better�����������������������������������������������������������4

Strategy execution—the good, bad, and the ugly ������������������������������������������������������ 5

Vision—strategizing for the long run���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5

Envisioning the future of entertainment: A Netflix case study�������������������������������5

Value—A proven ally to strategic execution�������������������������������������������������������������������7

Compromising on innovation: a Sony case study ����������������������������������������������������� 7

Implementation—The Achilles heel ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������10

1. Made by the C-Suite, for the C-Suite?���������������������������������������������������������������������������11

2. No time to wait����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 14

3. Using the wrong tools—It’s like a knife in a gunfight�������������������������������������������� 15

Complete the loop—Incorporate your lessons into your strategy ����������������������17

The verdict is out�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������19

Introduction
“Strategy” is a loaded word in the corporate world; its
definitions are often vague and can be entirely different
depending on who’s defining it for you.
For some, it might mean defining your business dreams,
where you see your company in 10 years, and for some,
it might mean a few nerve-wracking weeks spent on a
slide deck that is discussed once a year and is forgotten
for the rest of it.
The definitions may vary, but there’s one thing that we
can all unanimously agree on—even the best strategies
are worthless if they aren’t executed.
A lot of things need to come together to execute a
strategy well. You need all hands on deck; your planning
needs to be rooted in strong rationale, your timing
needs to be just right, and so much more. So it’s no
surprise that so many enterprise businesses fail at the
final stretch, even though they have some of the best
strategic minds at their helm. But when you take a
closer look at some of history’s biggest failures, you start
noticing underlying patterns that boil down to a few key
reasons. These reasons have forever defined the fates of
many big brands over the years and could very well be
the defining factor of your business trajectory.
Having empowered leading brands worldwide to build
and implement successful strategies from scratch, we
at Cascade understand the importance of execution,
which is why we came up with this playbook to give you
a comprehensive guide to strategic implementation: its
value proposition, its key tenets, and its drivers, backed
with case studies and quantitative insights.
Once you’re done with this playbook, you’ll walk away
with a strong understanding of the basics of excellent
strategic execution. You’ll learn about all the positives
that strong execution brings to the table, how industry
3
giants have failed and succeeded in this endeavor
and what we can learn from them, along with some
actionable best practices that will set you up to execute
your business strategies with finesse.
But before we dive so deep, let’s start with the most
important question.
What exactly is “strategy”?
Here’s a definition of corporate strategy according to
the CIO Index:
A corporate strategy entails a clearly defined, long-term
vision that organizations set to create corporate value
and motivate the workforce to implement the proper
actions to achieve customer satisfaction.
Let’s take a closer look at that definition.
1. Clearly defined, long-term vision
A business strategy starts with establishing why your
business exists. It begins with envisioning the pinnacle of
your business in the market. Next, you need to imagine
what your business looks like when it fully realizes its
potential—the goals it achieves, the problems it solves,
and the people it impacts.
What challenge is your business looking to solve? How
is it going to solve it? When? How is the solution going to
impact and benefit your customers?
It’s essential to have clear, well-defined answers to
these questions since these will help set the direction
towards which your efforts should move. Think of vision
as your business’ North Star—however small or big
your company is, and however your company grows,
establishing why your business exists will help keep it on
the right track.
2. Create tangible value
When your business sets out to solve a problem, what
unique value does it add? How does it set itself apart
from existing solutions in the market?
Your strategy needs to leverage the unique solution you
provide to differentiate yourself in the market. A strategy
that ignores market differentiation is an incomplete one
at best. Every successful brand that you use solves a
problem in a unique way that attracts customers and
retains them despite growing competition.
Data and history prove that value-driven strategies
have the highest chance of success, making the
most significant impact on customer advocacy and
profitability.
A survey by PwC found that companies with a well-
defined strategy of market differentiation and brand
identity tend to perform much better than companies
that compete based on diversification, economies of
scale, lucrative assets, etc. This method is referred to as
a capabilities-driven approach.
This approach helps define why customers should
choose your business and why they should choose only
you. While factors like pricing do play a prominent role,
in the long term, offering unique value that customers
can connect directly to your business sustains your
corporate strategy in the long run.
3. Mobilize your workforce to
implement better
This is the ultimate step that most companies fail at.
Most companies excel at the first two steps—they create
well-thought-out strategies accompanied by colorful
charts and slide decks. But very few companies see
these strategies make it out of these slide decks to
reality and reach their goals.
Companies’ performance depends on their sources of success
Three-year TSR growth rate for companies depending
on wether they compete in a capabilities-driven way
14.5%
12.7%
Below average Above average
Importance of capabilities-driven success drivers
TSR = Total shareholder return (A measure of the company’s financial performance over time)
Source
4
According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics,
approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the
first two years of being open, 45% during the first five
years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new
businesses make it to 15 years or more.
The main reason for this is that the top management
creates corporate strategies but does not get exposed
or communicate meaningfully to the rest of the
organization. As a result, teams aren’t aligned in the
same direction and don’t have clarity on their role in
the grand scheme of things. Expecting employees to
achieve the strategy’s outcomes while not planning
the execution is why many companies with immense
potential fail.
Communicating the corporate strategy and making it
a part of the day-to-day routine in the company can
make the difference between leading to success and
fading into obscurity.
Now that we’ve nailed down the fundamentals of
building a solid strategy, it’s time to focus on the most
crucial part of the process: making the strategy a
reality through powerful and thorough execution—and
how some of the biggest companies in the world have
succeeded (and failed) at this stage.
Three-year TSR growth rate for companies depending on
wether they compete on assets, scale, and diversification
15.7%
11.4%
Below average Above average
Importance of assets, scale, and diversification
as successdrivers
Strategy execution—the good,
bad, and the ugly

Vision

Value

Implementation

These three components hold the key to a strategy’s success or failure on a vast scale.
More importantly, businesses need to lean in on all three elements equally. It’s easy to think
that one of these components is not as important as the others.

Vision—strategizing Becoming the best global entertainment

distribution service
for the long run
The World’s Most Popular Video
As explained earlier, this part of the strategy needs to
Streaming Services
be clear and concise. The vision statement is core to the
focus areas of the strategy—is the main objective in line Video streaming services with the most subscribers as
with the company’s vision? How does this strategy tie of November 2019
into achieving your vision in the long run? At this stage,
it’s easy to identify companies that know what they’re
out to achieve and companies that are likely to struggle Netflix Global 151.6m
to grow.
iQiyi China 100.0m

Envisioning the future of entertainment:

Tencent
China 94.0m
A Netflix case study Video

Let’s take a look at Netflix’s vision statement: Youku China 82.1m

Becoming the best global entertainment distribution Amazon

Global 75.0m
service. Licensing entertainment content around Prime video*
the world. Creating markets that are accessible to
Viu SE Asia 30.0m
filmmakers.

Netflix had a clear, actionable vision that they worked Hulu USA 28.0m
towards while constantly innovating and strategizing to
create an unrivaled user experience. This differentiated Alt Balaji India 20.0m
them from Blockbuster, the market leader at the time
who failed to adapt and ended up in bankruptcy. Eros Now 18.8m
India

Iflix Asia 15.0m

*Estimate
Source

5
 Licensing entertainment content around the world Here’s something even better—Nike’s vision statement
from 1960:

Netflix Passes 200 Million Milestone Crush Adidas.

Number of paid Netflix subscribers worldwide at the end It’s a simple but powerful statement—it inspires the
of the respective year entire company and aligns them towards a single goal.
It’s easy to add targets and deadlines to this statement,
as compared to:
U.S. & Canada International

“Maximize our users’ ability to get their work done”

Vague vision statements create confusion and prevent

stakeholders from being invested in the organization’s
growth. So here’s a simple way to look at it: if you’re able
203.7m to answer the following questions or if you’re able to
167.1m construct a plan to the following questions by looking
139.3m at your vision statement, it’s good to go. If not, your
110.6m
89.1m company might be having an existential crisis.

Is the vision achievable?

How do we achieve this vision?

2016* 2017 2018 2019 2020

By when?

Who’s our competition?

*Until 2016, Canadian subscribers were included in the
international segment That’s pretty much it. A good vision statement is rooted
Source: Netflix in purpose and clarity and lays the foundation for your
business strategy.

Creating markets that are accessible to filmmakers

Amount Invested in Original Content

20

15
Amount Invested
($ Billions)

10

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Data Source

6
Value—A proven ally to
strategic execution
There are very few areas of business where an
organization can operate with zero competition—even
building space rockets for tourism can’t seem to escape
this phenomenon.
“Many companies focus too much on the
outside when developing their strategy,
and don’t combine that market-back
perspective with a clear view of what
their organization is great at doing.
In all the research we’ve done on the
topic of value creation, we see that
the essential advantage lies within. A
few differentiating capabilities drive a
company’s identity and success.”
— Cesare Mainardi, chief executive officer, Booz &
Company
Research shows that companies with a value-driven
approach to business tend to be more successful. So
let’s dive deeper and understand why.
Think of a few smartphone brands. (No, we’re not talking
about Apple. Yet.)
Some quickly come to mind: Samsung, Motorola, and
maybe even Nokia.
But there’s a brand that was once an industry pioneer,
a valued and trusted brand that we almost completely
forgot about: Sony.
Compromising on innovation:
a Sony case study
The origin
Here is an excerpt from the company’s vision statement:
To design and create innovative products which would
benefit the people.
Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony and the rest of
the company’s leadership, spent countless hours
innovatively thinking about how to use technology to
improve lives.
7
With such a passion for creating new markets, Sony
became an early creator and pioneer in the consumer
electronics industry. Sony made the world’s first
camcorders, it created the Walkman—a way for
people to carry music in their pockets, pioneered the
development of CDs for music, and the list goes on.
In short, Sony was changing the way people lived and
was undoubtedly one of the most innovative tech
brands in the world. So it was only a matter of time
before they revolutionized the smartphone market, too,
right?
According to Forbes, Sony executives spent 85% of their
time on technology, products, and new applications/
markets, 10% on human resource issues, and 5% on
finance.
If you think about it, Sony’s trajectory wasn’t so different
from how Apple functions.
So what went wrong?
When Sony teamed up with Ericsson to make
smartphones, its primary focus was volume and cost
reduction without compromising innovation. However,
under Akio Morita, Sony stayed focused on the products,
experimenting with different designs and styles while
keeping prices competitive.
But in 2005, Sony’s new management started leaning
more heavily into the cost-cutting model—Howard
Stringer, the then newly-appointed CEO of Sony,
exemplified the industrial strategy by laying off 9,000 of
30,000 US jobs. The focus was not on innovation or new
markets. Instead, it was focused entirely on price and
volume.
So with the launch of the game-changing Apple iPhone
in 2007, Sony started struggling and chose to stick with
its volume-based strategy rather than a value-based
one.
Strategies based on assets, scale, and diversification
are less likely to succeed and even less likely to stay that
way.
Apple’s approach to the value-based strategy is
straightforward, right from its vision statement to the
way it distributes its products, but it isn’t the only correct
approach to strategy.
Microsoft, for example, takes a more balanced approach
to strategy. As a result, they provide unique value
while also focusing on other areas like diversification,
targeting a broader segment of the market, etc. This
works well for Microsoft in most cases.
A survey by PwC shows the difference between Apple’s
and Microsoft’s strategy—and while their approach to
value-based strategy is different, the value proposition
is present and remains their priority.
So it doesn’t come as a surprise that these are the only
two companies globally that are valued at $2 Trillion.

“Given the competitive intensity

in today’s business environment,
companies need more than just one
or two great products to win in the
long term — differentiation through
capabilities is quickly becoming the only
path to sustainable value creation in
most industries. Coherent companies, in
every industry we’ve studied, outperform
their less coherent competitors.”

— Paul Leinwand, partner, Strategy&

While value can seem like an abstract, subjective term,

there are some methods you can follow to create
distinctive value and make it a part of your corporate
strategy. Here’s one such way—an interactive toolkit that
can help you clearly define your value-based strategy
from scratch. This is one of the most effective methods
used by thousands of companies to capture their
market and stay on top of the industry.

Sony mobile sales figures

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

120

100
Sales figure (in millions)

80

60

40

20

0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Source

8
Companies’ performance depends on their sources of success

Three-year TSR growth rate for companies depending Three-year TSR growth rate for companies depending
on whether they compete in a capabilities-driven way. on whether they compete on assets, scale, and
diversification

14.5% 15.7%

12.7%
11.4%

Below average Above average Below average Above average

Importance of capabilities-driven success drivers Importance of assets, scale, and diversification

as successdrivers

TSR = Total shareholder return (A measure of the company’s financial performance over time)

Source

Percentage of respondents indicating where on the scale the company’s approach lies

Apple (N=246) Microsoft (N=153)

Value Value
15% 13% 21% 51% 61% 22% 11% 6%
proposition proposition
21%

Capabilities 7% 5% 21% 68% Capabilities 38% 22% 22% 18%

Priorities 24% 16% 23% 38% Priorities 19% 33% 27% 21%

Growth 45% 22% 15% 18% Growth 14% 26% 35% 25%

Note: Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Source

9
Implementation—
The Achilles heel
The “final” step in corporate strategy is its execution.
Most companies can develop a competent vision
statement, have clarity on their capabilities, and often
have powerful strategies on paper.
But time and again, we’ve seen multinational giants
fluster and fail when it comes to execute their strategy.
The Economist Intelligence Unit report shows how
most companies place very little importance on
implementation and are, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful
with the implementation.
Why is that? The foundation is seemingly strong.
Companies toil for months and spend long hours in
conference rooms to create and discuss the elaborate
presentation. So what exactly could be the issue that
stops them from putting all this to action? Well, there
are multiple reasons—giants fail for a reason. This is the
trickiest part of strategizing.
Let’s take a closer look at the various obstacles to
implementing your strategy, how poor implementation
can affect a company’s performance, and how you can
avoid them altogether.

How important will improving the various aspects of strategy implementation be to the
competitiveness of your organisation over the next three years? (% of respondents)

Essential Very important Somewhat important

Formulating strategy appropriate for changing market conditions

40 49 9 9

Prioritising and funding the appropriate initiatives/projects

35 51 25

Successfully executing initiatives/projects in order to deliver strategic results

45 43 10

Feeding lessons from successful strategy implementation back into strategy formulation
18 54 24

Feeding lessons from failed strategy implementation back into strategy formulation

27 50 19

*Figures do not total 100% because “don’t know” responses are not included. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit survey, March 2013.

How important will improving the various aspects of strategy implementation be to the
competitiveness of your organisation over the next three years? (% of respondents)

Excellent Good Fair Somewhat

Formulating strategy appropriate for changing market conditions

15 49 25 9

Prioritising and funding the appropriate initiatives/projects

11 44 33 10

Successfully executing initiatives/projects in order to deliver strategic results

12 34 38 14

Feeding lessons from successful strategy implementation back into strategy formulation
7 33 35 21

Feeding lessons from failed strategy implementation back into strategy formulation
5 28 35 22

*Figures do not total 100% because “don’t know” responses are not included. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit survey, March 2013.

10
1. Made by the C-Suite,
for the C-Suite?
We saw earlier that only 25% of new businesses make
it to 15 years or more. Between 2009 and 2019, almost
370,000 small businesses failed to survive beyond their
first 10 years in the US alone. Yet 90% of the companies
develop detailed strategic plans with much higher
targets.
U.S. Small Businesses Failure Rate 2010-2019
212,873
374,715
Surviving businesses after 10 years
Failed businesses after 10 years
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
This chasm between ambition and execution, according
to HBR’s research, is because 95% of a company’s
employees are unaware of, or don’t understand, the
strategy.
The departments within the organization don’t align their
goals with the corporate strategy, the employees who
communicate with customers daily are not aligned with
the strategy, and the top-level executives do nothing
to ensure that every single process fits with the bigger
picture.
“It should not be a question of developing
a strategy and hoping it works, but of
developing a strategy and following a
logical plan to reach it.”
— Lawrence Hrebiniak, Professor Emeritus,
Department of Management, The Wharton School of
the University of Pennsylvania
11
Chrysler, the American automobile giant, struggled
due to its old-fashioned method of strategy execution.
In 2002, the company was staring at a possible loss of
over $5 billion. It needed an implementation overhaul
to retain its position as a Big Three in the US automobile
market.
Strategy starts at home
The newly-appointed CEO of Chrysler, Deiter Zetsche,
introduced the Balanced-Scorecard method to ensure
smoother implementation of the corporate strategy.
A dedicated team, called the Office of Strategy
Management, was assigned to communicate its
strategy to every one of its 90,000 employees. The
team also collected data from various organizational
processes to measure how it aligns with the overall
strategy.
Course correction
Through the balanced scorecard, the top executives
became aware of the issues that needed the
management’s attention—the OSM team followed up
with these areas after each meeting, ensuring quicker
course correction and better alignment of processes
with the strategy.
Chrysis averted
The OSM ensured that all processes and employees
were aligned with the corporate strategy and also
assisted business units in developing new products. As a
result, the team became a permanent fixture in Chrysler,
and it paid off very well for them. While the nation’s
automobile market struggled in 2004, Chrysler launched
a series of new cars and earned $1.2 billion that year.
Though the method was introduced in the 1990s, billion-
dollar companies still use the balanced scorecard as
a core element of their strategy today. According to
a 2020 survey, 77% of organizations believe that the
scorecard approach has risen in value and importance
during the pandemic and has helped them strategically
align teams effectively while working from home.
The approach is vertical-agnostic —A host of companies
dominating in different markets like Ford, Apple, Wells
Fargo, and more, use variations of the balanced
scorecard for the same purpose: to give their teams
both the big and the little picture to mobilize them
effectively.
Where is Balanced Scorecard used?

Functions 54% Middle East EU

17% 33%

Operations 54%

Executive 88%

Geographic
Board 58% Distribution

Asia
Sales 33%
17%

Country 4%

Africa Americas
4% 29%

<500
501-1,000
54%
13%

Organisation
size (employees)

1,001-5,000
21%

5,001-10,000
13%

The effective team alignment checklist
While it may not be possible to hire a dedicated team
solely for communicating the strategy to the whole
company, you can still take the essence of the approach
and apply it meaningfully to the context of your
organization to create your version of success.
Expose the overall goal to give everyone the
direction and purpose of the strategy. Next, start
having ground-level discussions with each team
to explain their role in the grand scheme of things.
Keep these discussions open and conversational
to make them a part of the strategizing process
through practical feedback.

Realign every single employee and process Here’s a simple guide to ensure you achieve
with the strategy employee understanding effectively:

12
New Strategy-Learning Journey

Employees' Understanding of Strategy and Connection to Their Work

High Quality Understanding

1 2 3 4

Market Context Organizational Business Strategy Strategy-Aligned

(e.g., macro trends, Purpose/Goals (e.g., key strategic Employee Behaviors
market risks, (e.g., company goals/ priorities, (e.g.. key behaviors,
customer trends) targets, purpose underlying values)
statement) assumptions)

Questions to What do you think are How have market Consider where the What aspects of the
Aid Employee the most surprising changes affected world is going: Why strategy are most
Understanding trends? what our stakeholders do you feel this is the important? Why?
ask of us? right strategy for us?
What is most What are we doing
important to the What has it made How different does that will help the
company as a whole? you think about how this feel from what business secure the
we understand our we’ve done before? strategy?
What is the biggest stakeholders and
opportunity? deliver value to the What strategic What should we stop
market? components may or start doing?
What mayindicate shift to reflect market
to us that trends are How would we trends? What would What behaviors and
changing? continue to meet our remain the same? activities are critical
purpose as trends to the business as
evolve? strategy evolves?

Resulting “I understand the “I know what our “I understand “I know what this
Employee market challenges company’s aspirations our plan for means for me and
Understanding and opportunities are” accomplishing what I need to do”
we face” our goals”

Source Low Quality Understanding

Ensure higher involvement of the top executives Maintain transparency—let the middle and
in the implementation—not just a once-in-a- bottom level employees understand how their work
year event impacts the overall strategy

Getting executives involved in weekly update
meetings and looping them in on important
documentation can create clarity for all parties
involved. Executives can see how their strategy is
shaping up as it goes from one stage to the next,
and stakeholder teams can be confident that
they’re on the right track.
Keep track of your strategy—monitor your
organization’s progress with purpose
Beyond sharing one-pagers with everyone, use
strategy tools to expose the strategy in detail to
everyone in your organization. Show them all the
moving parts and each team’s role in reaching the
broad goal. Enabling this transparency helps you
establish accountability and clear ownership of
tasks across teams, making collaboration easier
and avoiding overlapping conflicts for any specific
business function.

Keep an eye on important KPIs, check-in with

stakeholders and get feedback on their successes
and challenges so far. Insights through these two
means can help you intervene and course-correct
to keep your execution timeline intact.

13

2. No time to wait
In almost every company, there’s an annual strategy
discussion—held after many discussions—leading to
more discussions about the final draft, making sure
every aspect of it is perfect. But here’s the thing about
strategy—it often loses relevance in about 4-6 months.
The market is dynamic, and so are your competitors’
strategies. So to stay one step ahead, your strategy has
to keep evolving with the market. The core can be rooted
in your company’s vision, but there has to be continuous
innovation, iterative growth, and increasingly faster
execution.
Companies that sit around, waiting too long to do so
can find themselves becoming as irrelevant as their
strategy. There’s one organization that realized this and
went on to eliminate its competition by executing its
strategy faster than any other in the market.
Say hello to Nvidia
Established in 1993, Nvidia Corporation is an American
multinational tech company and designs graphics
processing units and 3-D graphics chips for the gaming
and professional markets.
Today, Nvidia is a market leader for 3-D graphics chips,
but that wasn’t always the case. In 1995, it struggled to
keep up with the rival startup 3Dfx Interactive. 3Dfx was
leading the industry because it could meet the rapidly
growing demand from gamers for fast 3-D graphics
chips. However, Intel was set to make the race even
more difficult with plans to introduce its chip.
14
Nvidia’s problem was that its rivals were implementing
their strategies a lot faster, and to survive, it had to act
right away.
Acceleration
Nvidia’s problem was not with its quality or even value—
it was simply that they were taking far too long to
execute their processes.
So, Nvidia’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, realized that the
solution was to beat the rivals with speed. No, not
by matching their speed of implementation—but by
making their strategies expire faster.
The industry’s standard rate of releasing newer chips
was 18 months. So Nvidia added a small yet critical
change to its strategy—”Release a faster, better chip
three times faster than the industry norm.”
To accommodate this change in strategy, Nvidia:
• Redesigned its projects and objectives into smaller,
more focused ones
• Formed three development teams that worked in
tandem
• Invested heavily in simulation facilities to prevent
any delays in the fabrication of chips and
development of software drivers
• Took control of driver development from the add-in
board makers
The result?
Over the next decade, Nvidia toppled its formidable
competitors—Intel, having entered the space in 1998,
made a quiet exit the following year since it couldn’t
keep up with Nvidia. In 2000, 3Dfx Interactive went
bankrupt. In 2007, Forbes named Nvidia “Company of
the year”.
Nvidia uses the same strategic advantage to this day—
with its revenue jumping 53% in fiscal 2021 to $16.7 billion,
thanks to its lead in the gaming business—which is
Nvidia’s most significant source of revenue. In addition,
their latest line of RTX 30-series graphic cards was a
massive leap from the previous set of RTX 20-series
cards, jumping far ahead of the competition and even
themselves in the process.
With a dominant market standing in the gaming market,
50% of the company’s total revenue in Q1 of 2021 came
from its gaming GPUs, with a 67% YoY growth.
The reason for its enormous success? Nvidia says that
its Ampere GPU (graphics processing unit) architecture
is created at twice the pace of its predecessors, the
Turing and Pascal cards.
The speed of their strategy implementation has led to
incredible results—as of Q2 of 2021, Nvidia now holds 83%
of the GPU market share and is constantly increasing its
foothold by 3% YoY.
So when it comes to corporate strategy, it’s safe to say
that speed does not kill.
How can you do what Nvidia did?
There’s no fixed blueprint for success, but from all our
research, these steps are the ones that figure the most
in speedy implementation success stories:
Execute with urgency
When competing on speed, your teams need
to be driven and motivated to move, think, and
ship things faster. Set ambitious (but realistic)
deadlines, and equip them with all the necessary
tools to meet them. Incentivize them for executing
stuff on time, and appreciate their hard work—Plan
special activities to keep morale high and inspire
them to keep pushing towards the objective with
urgency.
Break down broad objectives into smaller, more
actionable targets
Broad objectives are great for imbuing purpose,
but lacks in giving employees immediate direction.
Instead, plan for short-term weekly task lists, and
have monthly OKRs for the team to work towards.
Empower your teams to work in parallel—Don’t wait
around to check off one task at a time
A fast pace of execution requires teams working
in parallel and in tandem—build solid lines of
communication between teams to create a
network of real-time updates flowing between
them. Use software with intelligent project
management with a centralized task board to
generate visibility into who owns what tasks and
what’s pending. Leveraging great collaboration
and management tools can open up silos between
teams and bring out the collective best in your
organization.
Don’t hesitate to hire and bring in more people
Executing faster means a bigger workload with
shorter deadlines. Talk to managers to see which
business functions need extra resources, and
hire accordingly. Search for people with the right
experience and culture to fight right into the
current team, and start contributing as they pick
things up. Hiring enough people can keep your
team lean and working fast while also ensuring
that no one works with an overwhelming workload.
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Refine and bring your processes up to speed
A company that wants to move fast can quickly
get held down by slow processes that follow
unnecessary due diligence. Revisit your processes
to keep just the essentials and optimize for speed—
keeping things process-driven while moving fast
makes for lean, mean, agile teams with lightning
speed execution.
3. Using the wrong tools—It’s like a
knife in a gunfight
9 in 10 organizations fail the execution game because
they fall victim to at least one of the following
challenges:
• One-way communication from the top
• Disjointed collaboration across teams
• No system to assess and refine performance
These problems are impactful enough to warrant
strategies of their own, but this begs the question: how
do you solve problems with tools that are problematic
themselves?
Presentations and spreadsheets are helpful tools in
the workplace, but they are not meant for strategy
execution. Let’s explore just a few reasons why that’s the
case:
• Uncollaborative:
Presentations and spreadsheets are good tools
for preparing a good draft of your ideas. But it’s
not conducive to working in tandem and inviting
more collaborative efforts. It leaves room for
a lot of miscommunication and errors—and
if we’ve learned anything, it’s that strategy
requires absolute clarity, and needs inputs from
people across multiple levels. Presentations and
spreadsheets are not effective when it comes to
that.
• Don’t capture the complexity:
Presentations and spreadsheets don’t accurately
capture the complexity of a strategy. Clarity
and detail come at the cost of each other while
trying to explain a multi-level strategy. Accurately
representing the structure of your strategy in an
empty grid table is a convoluted process.
• Impossible to track:
Presentations are just that—they can be made of
incredibly polished slides, but they don’t paint the
complete picture. Employees/teams can’t track
 how their processes contribute to the end goal. Top
executives cannot see if all the targets align with
the strategy.

Using unsuitable tools affects the way your strategy

is executed—trying to save on the cost of investing
in the proper software could end up costing your
organization quite a bit.

• Remains static:

You can’t make decisions for tomorrow with data

from yesterday. Spreadsheets and presentations
lack real-time data that keeps you readily informed
to make well-informed decisions. Keeping track of
your KPIs and team performance on spreadsheets
and presentations leaves a wide margin for error.
But you can’t improve if you don’t know exactly
what needs improvement.

Barebone tools get you to the starting line for a

business-critical function, like strategy, but they
don’t help you compete. You need software tools
to help you lay out your strategy with nuance and
clarity, provide a platform for brainstorming and
collaboration, measure key information in real-
time, and take incremental steps towards your
goals.

What to look for when choosing the perfect

strategy execution platform

You can’t compromise on the tools you use if you want

to bring the best out of your strategy and execute it
flawlessly. Here’s a handy checklist of green flags for
strategy execution software to let you know you’re
making the right choice:

Makes laying out a complex strategy simple and

intuitive

Brings the entire team on the same page

Breaks down big objectives into smaller, actionable

tasks

Clearly defines responsibility and ownership across

teams and stakeholders

Keeps you informed of progress across multiple

projects with real-time updates

Fits in with the rest of your software ecosystem

Offers real-time performance data in a visual,

intuitive format to adapt and iterate on it

A platform that offers these capabilities can make

life easier for your entire organization and keeps the
strategy flowing smoothly from inception to execution..

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Complete the loop—
Incorporate your lessons
into your strategy
Those involved in setting high-level strategy are also closely
involved in its implementation
Those involved in outlining the steps of a strategic initiative but
not high-level strategy planning are also closely involved in its
implementation
Strategic initiatives are assessed upon completion and a list of
lessons learned is communicated to those who set high-level
strategy
There is no specific method or process by which lessons learned
are fed back into strategy formation
When you execute your strategy, you succeed or fail,
but you learn either way. The biggest companies in the
world have seen failure in one form or the other—and the
only way to not repeat those mistakes is by analyzing
the entire process.
“ The natural starting point was to ask
what worked well and why [in the past],
and to bring those lessons into the new
process. That was key for us.”
— Bali Padda, COO of LEGO
It sounds obvious, but base your next annual strategy
on the learnings and insights of the previous year’s
outcomes. Studies show that almost 77% of people
agree that incorporating lessons from successful or
failed strategic initiatives is essential.
Yet, according to the study, less than 35% of the
companies are good at closing this feedback loop. Even
worse, 33% of the companies don’t even have a process
to analyze and incorporate lessons from the previous
strategic initiatives.
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Best executors All other companies
59% 23%
44% 30%
36% 24%
11% 37%
Each business has its method to gather information
from earlier successful or failed initiatives. But some
effective methods can be observed from companies
that are good at executing their strategies.
Let’s take a closer look at each of those methods:
• Closer involvement of the C-Suite
This is the fastest way to close the cycle. When
closely involved with its execution, the people in
charge of creating strategies get a first-hand
analysis of what works and what doesn’t. It goes
straight back into the loop, and with no third-party
line of communication involved, there’s very little
room for things being left out or misunderstood.
Ensuring higher involvement of top-level executives
with the execution of the strategy is again proving
to be an essential element to the strategy’s
success, from start to finish.
• Hands-on involvement of mid-level managers
Executives involved in breaking down the strategy
into actionable objectives bridge the gap between
executives heading the strategy and the teams
executing it. They identify and incorporate valuable
information that helps speed up the execution,
 motivate the team with specific targets, and help
align teams better with the overall strategy. This
is particularly effective when the organization’s
foundation (i.e., vision and value) is strong and
managers are empowered to take control of their
objectives.

• Collated upon completion and passed on to

the top

We saw Chrysler use this method with its Balanced

Scorecard method. Though a bit slower and
indirect, this method can be extremely effective
if done right. The feedback comes from the
people in charge of carrying out the finer details
of the strategy, which is often highly relevant and
accurate. Collecting employee feedback before
developing the next strategic initiative ensures that
lessons from failures and successes are captured
effectively.

Executing your strategy year-on-year is similar to a

circuit race: after finishing a lap, you’re back at the
starting line, but you have more clarity on your position
among others in the race and the momentum to move
faster than the last lap. Unfortunately, without a process
in place to incorporate feedback into your strategy,
you’re starting from the first lap every single time.

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The verdict is out
Strategy is complex, and success doesn’t come easy.
Industry giants like Apple and Microsoft echo this
sentiment too. However, companies like Apple and
Microsoft are more than likely to succeed regardless
of their strategy. Why? Because companies like Apple
and Microsoft can attract and afford the top 1% of
talent. These individuals will execute the desired results
regardless of the strategic plan.

A significant part of the problem with organizational

strategy begins before the planning even starts. At
only 17% of companies, implementation is seen as
strategic. Instead, at 56% of firms, it is considered to be
an operational task. There are many ways to build and
execute successful strategies, but it has to start with
a change in perception—there are plenty of examples
of good and bad strategic decisions that we’ve tried
to highlight here. Taking a leaf out of the experiences
of these multinational giants can help, but the actual
execution of it all remains with you.

This is where Cascade comes in, as the world’s #1

strategy to execution platform, we help thousands
of organizations in over 100 countries align, act and
adapt their strategy. We’re changing the perception of
strategy, democratizing the strategic process making
strategy available to everyone in your organization. The
Cascade framework enables adaptive organizations
to adjust their strategies quickly and accelerate the
execution of their plan.

This is why we wrote this playbook, driven with data and

insights from history’s biggest case studies through the
Cascade strategic lens. We hope that the insights and
actionable templates in this playbook bring you closer
to better executing your strategy and take you a few
steps closer to realizing your company’s vision.

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Wasn’t that
insightful?
If you are excited to start creating and
executing your strategy, Cascade can
help you on your way.

Book a demo with our team of strategy

experts today.

Book a Demo Learn about Cascade

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