6 Reasons Your Business Strategy is Failing and How to Fix It

Great strategies often fail as a result of poor execution and, at the same time, great execution cannot save a truly poor business strategy.

Even great organizations can struggle due to the limitations of their thinking or approaches. The existing leadership team may fail to plan, execute, measure, and refine business goals as the company grows and faces the tough headwinds of a competitive marketplace.

Decision-making gives way to “analysis paralysis” as the team contemplates large-scale change with very high stakes. The longer this cycle continues, the harder change becomes.

Here we take a deep dive into the most common reasons business strategies fail and how to fix them with the help of interim executives who bring a unique combination of strategy and execution.

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Business Optimization: How Interims do it Right

Business optimization is defined as “the process of identifying and implementing new methods that make the business more efficient and cost-effective.”

Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. The reality, as business owners and C-suite executives know, is that gaining the highest return for the lowest cost on all company expenses isn’t easy. While improving the bottom line by reducing rent is good, gaining similar savings by improving existing processes is better — much better. That’s because the more efficient process will pay back more and more as volume increases. And it can become a catalyst for reducing the operating cost of other related processes.

Experienced interim executives understand that business process optimization is the Holy Grail of cost reduction and business efficiency. They are action-oriented leaders who begin looking for ways to create value and deliver real results to the clients from Day One. They know how to find hidden value in existing products, processes, and systems, how to implement actionable strategies, and how to gain the alignment necessary to optimize the business.

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How to Drive Top Line Growth and Maximize the Bottom Line

As the adage goes, “Growth solves many ills.” Growing companies create more buzz, have an easier time attracting capital and talent, and overall have more opportunities than those in decline or with stalled growth. The two primary sources of top-line growth in revenue are sales to new customers and generating sales growth for existing customers. Both are most easily improved with fresh sales initiatives.

Yin to the yang of optimization efforts, maximization focuses on growing total revenue, market share, units, gross sales margins, and customers. It also focuses on maximizing the opportunities to sell products or services in properly defined and highly aligned channels, a process commonly referred to as the value chain. The value chain includes all activities from pre-sales to customer service that directly impact the customer base.

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How to Achieve Maximum Results with Strategic Alignment

In his book, The Future of Your Company Depends on It, marketing expert Al Reis illustrates the power of focus using light energy as an analogy. The sun, emitting billions of kilowatts of energy will only give us sunburn, while a laser using a tiny fraction of that amount of light energy can cut steel. One key to optimizing organizational performance is ensuring complete strategic alignment of the business goals, creating laser focus on what matters most.

That requires looking at the alignment of human resources— from the executive team to front-line employees — as well as the alignment of products, assets, and strategic decisions. 

In the big picture, ineffective organizations struggle to gain results from solid strategic planning and execution while highly aligned organizations can see benefits even from weaker plans and strategy execution. Great companies find a competitive advantage in optimizing organizational structure to drive superior results. 

Interims understand the importance of strategic alignment. They view people, products, services, processes, technology, systems, methodologies, and other assets as investments that must yield a meaningful ROI and drive efficient operations and ever-increasing sales. 

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What is an Interim Executive Director and Why Would You Want One?

The concept of an Interim Executive Director (ED) isn’t well-known among nonprofit organizations…yet. But, it’s becoming more mainstream and for many good business reasons.

On average, it takes a Board of Directors 9 months to recruit a new Executive Director. By the time they are on-boarded and contributing, a year may have passed since the departure of the prior nonprofit leader.

While nonprofit board members may step up to “mind the gap,” the truth is that stakeholders — employees, partners, and funders — can lose confidence in your organization during this leadership transition and key employees may leave.

Organizing payroll, developing a budget and/or managing human resources may keep the lights on, but without someone filling the executive director role during the transition period, your organization can be harmed and stymied while the Board is focused on the executive search for a new ED.

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Decoding Executive Titles: The Difference Between Interim, Project, Part-Time & Fractional Executives

Interim, acting, project, contract, fractional, part-time. The array of executive titles can make your head spin. But they all point to a specialized type of executive that companies call on when they are going through transformation.

What is an interim executive and how does that differ from a part-time executive, a project executive, or fractional executive?

Let’s break it down.

What is an Interim Executive?

Interim executives are highly-skilled, experienced C-level executives who typically contract to work for a company for a defined period, versus full-time executives who are hired by the company. The defined period can be as little as one month or last as long as two years.

There are highly qualified interim CEOs, interim CFOs, interim COOs, interim CIOs, interim CMOs and CSOs ready to step into a position.

Why would a company choose an interim executive over a full-time executive?

There are many possible reasons, but in all cases, the company needs some kind of change or upgrade.

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Executive-as-a-Service Can Solve Your Leadership Problems Like SaaS Solved Your Outdated Software Problems

For years, companies have used SaaS – Software-as-a-Service – to solve their technology problems. No more buying expensive software. No more hiring experienced managers to oversee its installation. No more worrying about updates. It’s all handled by the pros and the service lives in the cloud, ready for your people to access the minute the need arises.

Now, companies are discovering that EaaS – Executives-as-a-Service – can just as easily solve their c-level executive challenges.

What is Executive-as-a-Service?

Like SaaS, which is subscription-based on-demand access to digitals tools, EaaS is on-demand access to executive leadership, whether you need the skills of a chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, chief technology officer, or any other type of “chief.”

EaaS allows you to pay only for the c-level expertise you need and only for as long as you need it. No pricey executive search fees. No hiring bonuses No long-term contracts. No human resources expenses. As a cost-effective alternative to onboarding any type of full-time chief executive, the EaaS model means that even small businesses can afford experienced, effective leadership.

Executive-as-a-Service leaders are interim or fractional executives with a wealth of experience managing companies through big challenges such as rapid growth or decline, mergers or acquisitions, new market demands, and dried up funding.

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Executive Matchmaking and the Sacred Trust of Ownership

When you own the company, it’s nothing like being an employee. You might as well compare lifting up a hundred pound weight versus a feather.

Through the years I’ve owned or been a shareholder in a number of companies. So when I initially started a career taking on interim assignments – in my case helping companies prep for sale and ultimately exiting to a financial buyer or strategic investor – I approached every company as if it was my own.

Only in running and owning a company can you know firsthand the sleepless nights.

Pondering everything. Like cash flow.

Hiring and retaining your best people.

Making payroll.

The questions are endless: how do we compete better? How do we win ridiculously large contracts? What do we do if the market goes down? How do we make our marketing viral?

Ownership is not for everyone and it is easy to feel….well, alone.

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A Look Back on 2021 and the RED Team

As we reflect on the past year, we are grateful to the incredible executives that make up InterimExecs RED Team, as well as our clients who have put their faith in us and the leaders we deploy. We’ve jumped into companies from fintech to healthcare to manufacturing. Some struggling with declining revenue, lack of systems and process, or high turnover. Others experiencing big growth — maybe even spurred on by the last two years in a pandemic and changes to consumer behavior.

We’ve wrapped up a few top highlights from the year here: 2021 Year in Review

Wishing you and your families happy holidays and a prosperous New Year!

2021 YEAR IN REVIEW

Company owners and investors call us wanting to brainstorm about the type of leaders they need, which is great – right up our alley.

Why do companies call us saying they need an interim executiveA top interim put it this way: companies show up because something is going really, really right. Or because something has gone really, really wrong.

Fitting into one of those categories is just the start of the conversation. We also must determine if an organization is the right fit to work with InterimExecs RED Team.

We have invested 12 years and thousands of man-hours screening, ranking, and choosing the most talented CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other executives across the C-suite to form the RED Team. That work continues every day, curating top talent for leadership on demand. These relationships are dear to us, so just as we screen executives, it’s important that we also screen companies that want to land a great executive.

Would your organization be a good fit for us and the RED Team? We have listed the top three factors we seek in both executives and companies we choose to match for talent.

Let’s explore this together and see how we match up in our leadership on demand values and your company’s goals:

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