Why Business Owners Struggle to Implement Even the Best Strategies

Welcome to The Contractor's Daughter, your go-to podcast for eliminating random acts of strategy and marketing in your highway construction business. Hello, friends. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob. I'm a third-generation asphalt contractor and an absolute brand strategy and marketing geek.

Welcome to The Contractor's Daughter. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob, a third-generation contractor who has shifted and now helps other people in the paving industry grow and build businesses that they are going to have legacies of, that are going to give them all the success and achievement they want.

We are wrapping up, or getting close to wrapping up a series looking at the Growth Strategy Wheel that I use in my business to help clients overcome stalls, to just perform at higher rates, to bridge the gaps between all the different dreams and opportunities that they look at, and actually executing on those.

The third part of this wheel is implementation. It's the critical piece that when we've been busy in the trenches working on stuff, sometimes we get to the end and we forget to really sprint, hold ourselves to it, keep ourselves accountable, and really finish strong. But this is what really makes a difference right here is the implementation part.

One of my key secrets that I'm going to share with you right out of the gate is that when I look at implementation, it's not just how do we actually execute on this, but how do we document all the things that we're doing. How do we create processes, systems, look for opportunities to delegate to the right people, to include the right people, to automate where possible in this world of such incredible technology, so that we are quicker, more efficient, and that we're not doing this piece over and over that it gets easier and easier?

As our businesses grow and evolve, we actually have an asset. Whatever we tackle in our businesses, whatever strategy that we see, that we identify, and we really go after the opportunity, and then we execute and implement on it, we should have processes and systems in place because that's what helps us grow even faster and even better. It helps our team get involved and really maximize all of their potential along the way too.

I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about this. We don't just want to implement, we want to document, build processes, systems, automate wherever possible so we can get the most out of that implementation.

One of the great benefits of that is when we go through this process with our clients, it puts them in a position to really own the tactics and assets on the backside, increasing the value of their business and the effectiveness and operations of their business as well.

As a business owner, as somebody that also grew up in this industry, I put a lot of value on that. When I think about when we're trying to position our businesses for down the road for next generation, for outside buyers, for maybe people that work for us that might be stepping into better leadership roles or even ownership roles, we want to create our business so it's always improving and we're always increasing the value of our business. It's good for us, and it's good for those next generations moving forward with the company.

Let's focus on this implementation piece. It's all about good intentions. We have the best intentions when we start this process. When we sat down and we did the investigation piece, we figured out what are the opportunities, what is the strategy going to look like, we identified the most important thing, the thing that if we focused on this, it would get us the best outcome and have the biggest impact across the board in our organization, but now we actually have to sit down and do it.

I always say in my presentations, “Good intentions don't pave roads. They also don't sell our products. They don't build pavers, they don't build loaders, they don't attract and retain the workforce that we need. They don't increase our revenue. Good intentions don't do any of that. Great implementation does.”

To maximize it, like I said, we want to document and build those processes along the way. As a matter of fact, let's actually put this in context. It's the lack of attention and the time on the strategy that actually leads to a poorly defined strategy. Having a strategy isn't really enough. We have to really make sure that we spend regular time on it. We have to define it. We have to communicate it to our teams so that they understand and we have to understand what those strategic objectives are, make sure our team understands those, and the lack of intentionality really is what leads to poor implementation.

We have to be intentional about that implementation piece. Of course, if you've been following the podcast, if you're subscribed, if you've been to any of my industry presentations or events, we've ever chatted on the phone, you know that I believe in research data, understanding the market, understanding my clients’ specific businesses.

Let me give you some numbers that help put this into context. 90% of organizations fail to execute on strategy. That means that they've at least thought about strategy, even if they didn't really develop it, invest in it, get really driven by research and data, they've at least had a strategy but yet 90% are failing to actually execute on it.

They're developing it but they're just not doing anything about it. 85% of leaders spend less than one hour a month on strategy. If you think about it, the primary job of owners, leaders, and executives in our companies should be to manage strategy, to drive strategy, to communicate it down through the company, and help make sure that it's getting implemented.

Less than one hour a month is nowhere near enough time to really be sure that we're optimizing our business and getting the most out of it, leveraging ourselves, and positioning ourselves for the best outcomes. 50% actually spend no time. These metrics, these numbers are staggering, and they just absolutely blow my mind.

Our strategy should not be a dusty mission statement that we just peek at maybe every year, maybe every six months, or even every couple of years, but rather, it should be an actual asset in our business and a tool that we leverage to intentionally and actively manage and measure success by.

I'm going to repeat that because I think it's really, really critical. Your strategy should not be a dusting mission that you peek at infrequently, but rather, it should be an asset and a tool that you're leveraging intentionally and actively managing and measuring success with this tool and this asset. It’s what really guides success, it helps you stay on track and pushes you to always go further.

Let's talk about some of the things that are the obstacles I find that really keep us from implementing. First off, what we hear from our teams, even leadership management owners is it's super time-consuming and I'm too busy with the day-to-day operations to spend the time that really would be required to do this right.

But the obvious thing here is that if 90% of our organizations fail to execute and we're spending such a minimal amount of time, imagine what just a little bit more time, especially if we're doing it within the context of something like the Strategic Growth Wheel, something that allows us to operate quickly and not flounder around in the process, but can you afford not to be spending time on this or at least putting the right people in your company focused on it?

Even if they have a third party that's helping drive this for them, they should be spending time. They absolutely cannot afford to not be spending time, especially at the stall rates that we see in the industry for companies that are just not growing as they should be, especially with all the opportunities we're currently seeing in infrastructure right now.

Here's another objection we hear when it comes to implementing strategy is that it's complicated. Maybe owners and executives spend time trying to figure this out but when it comes to the operational level, the managers, the supervisor, the people that are really deploying the tactics, and moving the needle and also maybe measuring the results and reporting back, they don't understand what the strategy is.

They don't understand the objectives. They don't understand how the tactics may be linked back to the strategy and the objectives. This is why I think part of the strategy that is so important and often missed is developing communication. You need to have part of that strategy B, how inside of your company are you going to communicate the strategy, the importance of it, and actually take it from a level of strategy to operational tactics?

We actually have a great tool that we'll be talking about in a future episode because it's a little bit too detailed and nuanced to go into here. But I've probably mentioned it before, it's the functional mission statement. It's a great way to help people break that down and tie their specific actions to the high-level strategic objectives of a company and you can actually do this from the top all the way down to the very bottom of your business and all the way across the board with everybody on the team.

Oftentimes, another objection that we hear is that it doesn't match reality. I think this is a valid argument. But one thing we need to understand as the leaders and the people spearheading these strategies, and also we need to communicate to our teams is that they're living breathing things. That's why we measure them. That's why we continually actively watch them, engage in them, look at how we need to make adjustments, continue to research our market, and understand what impacts or things are influencing it that we need to be watching and trending for.

It is something that we need to allow to breathe and we need to always be adapting and measuring results. This doesn't mean that you throw a strategy in the trash overnight, especially if you've done all the work in developing it properly but you may say if we're not seeing the results we want, or something unexpected came up in an external factor, how do we adjust for that? How do we pivot? Are we measuring the right thing? Do we A/B test some of our tactics?

You have to really understand that this is a living breathing thing. It is not some ideal structure that lives inside of a museum case. It's something that we're actively doing. Progress is messy. Strategy can get messy when we're actually deploying it, putting it into action, and implementing it.

Another objection that we hear is that there's so much emphasis on agile principles. The world is evolving and moving so quickly that we want to be agile enough. We're nervous about being tied down too closely to a specific strategy. I want to go back to what we were just talking about.

This is a living, breathing thing that if you're managing it right and you're using a process and a framework similar to the Strategic Growth Wheel, then you are actually allowing it to continue to be agile and keep you on track. It actually facilitates being agile when you're using a framework like that and you're always actively engaged with your strategy.

We've talked about some of the objectives, but let's go back to why implementation is so important. This is what we know to be true. This is what my experience and all other strategists that I communicate and work with and really top business owners that are focused on strategy in their companies understand. Companies fail or they fall short of their potential not because of bad strategies, but because of the failure to implement good to great strategies.

It is important that we build better strategies but if we are going to build great and good strategies but fail to implement them, then it's just not worth it. We're wasting our time and our effort. We probably need to get out of the fight. I want you to think about how you can commit to implementation.

Make sure that when you're thinking about implementation, you're thinking about documenting processes. Think about the statistics that I share with you and it's going to help keep you motivated to stay focused all the way through the race even when you get to that tougher implementation side.

It doesn't have to be so tough. There are frameworks and processes, like the functional mission statement that will help you take those high-level things and communicate them all the way down through your team to help your team stay actively engaged and focused so you really get results.

Think about making sure that you're bridging the gap between strategy and execution so that you're getting results. If you are thinking about developing a strategy and wanting to get all the way through to implementation this year, which now is a great time to do it, we're wrapping up quarter four but no matter when you're doing it, the best day to plant a tree was yesterday. If you didn't, do it today.

If you want help thinking about your strategy, thinking about identifying the right thing to focus on at that time, then also how do you implement and get the most out of that implementation process, make sure that you schedule a call. We have a link in our show notes where you can get some time on my calendar and we can talk about your business, the objectives and the goals that you want to reach, and how you're going to bridge that gap.

Schedule that call either in the link in the show notes or at storybuilt.marketing/schedule. Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and you are going to be getting an actual case study and watching how this process worked in action in an actual statewide initiative in our next episode, so make sure you subscribe and make sure you get on that calendar.

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Contractor's Daughter. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and review. But most of all, share this with all of your friends, partners, and customers in the highway construction business. Thank you for building the infrastructure that we all rely on.