What good strategy implementation looks like
Leaders who understand their piece of it
Every senior leader in an organisation should be able to clearly articulate how their team’s work connects to the strategic goals. That doesn’t happen automatically. It requires a deliberate process of translating high-level goals into team-level actions, with the support to do it well.
In practice, this usually means working individually with leaders through a coaching process, helping them take a board-level strategic goal and break it into specific actions for their team over the next six to twelve months. Without that support, leaders often default to doing what they were already doing and file the strategy away as something that concerns the board rather than them.
Objectives that have owners and timelines
A goal without a name attached to it and a date by which it will be achieved is a wish, not a commitment. Good strategy implementation assigns specific actions to specific people with realistic timelines and the resource to deliver them.
It also means checking that people have the capacity to do what they’ve been asked to do. One of the most common reasons implementation stalls is that strategic responsibilities are added to people who are already working at full capacity. Ownership without capacity is just pressure with a deadline attached.
KPIs that mean something
KPIs should not be chosen because they are easy to measure. They should be chosen because they tell you whether the strategy is working. That means they need to be linked directly to the outcomes the strategy is designed to achieve, not to the activities that happen along the way.
A simple test: is your KPI telling you what you did, or what changed as a result? “Number of training sessions delivered” is an activity metric. “Percentage of managers who passed a competency review after training” is an outcome metric. The second tells you whether the work is having an impact. The first only tells you it happened.
A reporting rhythm that keeps it alive
Strategy that is only reviewed at board meetings twice a year will drift. A monthly management discussion that uses a consistent format to track progress against objectives keeps the strategy present and gives leaders the space to flag when something isn’t working before it becomes a bigger problem.
The format doesn’t need to be complex. A single page showing each strategic goal, the named owner, progress against the most recent milestone, and any risks or blockers is enough. Consistency matters more than comprehensiveness.
How to know if your strategy is drifting
It’s easy for strategy implementation to slide without anyone noticing, especially in organisations where operational pressures dominate. These are the signs we most commonly see when strategy has quietly stalled.
People can’t explain the strategy in plain language. If a senior leader can’t tell you in two sentences what the strategy means for their team, it hasn’t been properly translated into their work.
KPIs exist but no one owns them. Strategic metrics without a named owner are decorative. If there’s no one accountable for tracking and reporting a KPI, it won’t get measured.
Progress is reported as activity, not outcomes. “We ran three workshops” is not a strategic outcome. “Volunteer retention increased by 12%” is. The distinction matters, and it’s worth being honest about which type of reporting your organisation currently does.
How we helped YMCA Worcestershire
YMCA Worcestershire had been through a significant period of change. They had refreshed their mission, vision, and values, and done good work on a strategic framework. They identified that support translating that framework into operational action across six or seven departments would be beneficial.
Through Worcestershire County Council’s workforce planning funding, they brought us in to work with the leadership team and help to identify objectives to support the strategic goals. We started with a detailed review of their existing strategy and planning documents, then ran a series of coaching sessions with individual leaders to help them translate the strategic goals into team-level action plans with timelines and KPIs.
The outcome was a proposed new framework capturing each department’s objectives, actions, timelines, and first, second, and third year KPIs, all aligned to the organisation’s broader strategic milestones. We also created a monthly board report template so that progress could be tracked and discussed consistently.
“We were very grateful to get Workforce Planning support for this through consultancy work with Limelite HR. They reviewed what we’d done so far, liaised with key staff members and helped us to harness this into a more complete and workable format. This is now enabling us to have a clearer road map in our efforts and a means by which to monitor progress.”
Dr Annette Daly, CEO, YMCA Worcestershire
The goal isn’t to create more paperwork. It’s to make the strategy real, visible, and owned at every level of the organisation.
Three questions to ask yourself
- Can every senior leader in your organisation explain, in plain language, what they are doing this quarter to deliver the strategy?
- Do you have a mechanism for reviewing strategic progress regularly, not just at board meetings?
- Are your KPIs linked to the outcomes you’re trying to achieve, or are they measuring the activity that happens on the way there?
If any of those answers is uncertain, it’s worth having a conversation.
We work with charities and not-for-profits across Worcestershire on strategy, leadership and people development.
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About the author
Lisa Murphy FCIPD, CEO and Founder of Limelite HR & Learning. Lisa is a multi-award winning HR and leadership expert and Fellow of the CIPD, specialising in strategic HR, inclusion and organisational development. She’s passionate about helping organisations build amazing places to work. Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn.
