JOHN W. FORTIN

Why Execution Fails and What To Do About It

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Industry studies have documented that approximately 70% of change initiatives fail to deliver expectations. Over the years, and even more recently, top-down and bottom-up leadership has struggled to make improvement programs take hold. In the midst of every effort, there are typically three basic components: people, process and technology. How well each of these interact with each other is where efficiency and effectiveness can be measured. While it appears to be very simple, employees are already stretched thin, given economic pressures and the constant drive to do more with less.

 

With every new initiative, the office hallways echo with, “Here it comes again, another flavor of the month program – ugh!” In the drive for a competitive advantage and trying to leverage technologies as key efficiency components, companies launch improvement efforts on a regular basis. Strategic plans are commonplace and typically include a variety of cross-cutting initiatives and activities. In the whirlwind of normal workloads and the excitement to launch, executives and managers can forget to establish an execution strategy – a leading root cause of the high failure rate of implementation efforts!

 

It should be clearly understood that there is no “silver bullet” solution nor a straight line trajectory to completion. The world we live in is constantly changing and there most likely will be course correction needs along the implementation phase. Be prepared to accept and adapt to these dynamics and shifts because they will occur!

The DELTA FORCE model for execution excellence is built on over sixteen years of proven success helping companies and executives accelerate and deliver real value from technical initiatives, such as asset performance and reliability management change initiatives. The concepts are simple and the model has been developed to help identify and simplify the various components. DELTA focuses on successful execution process steps and FORCE provides execution imperatives, sometimes referred to as critical success factors. In short, the DELTA FORCE’s model has been developed to close the gap, accelerate change and deliver return on investment (ROI).

 

This book is written around the proven execution excellence elements and is supplemented with real-life stories and anecdotes that have helped shape the DELTA FORCE model.

 

The new Chapter 4 titled “The ART of Executive Sponsorship” promises to provide a robust framework that will help formalize and operationalize this critical role to coordinate, own and drive change efforts to successful completion.