Do you know that some 70% of strategic plans are never executed. To stay competitive, new time frames and approaches are needed to bridge the gap between strategy and execution.

Remember when strategic plans were written in five- to 10-year time spans? Remember when they were closely held secrets at the top of corporations, not widely shared internally, and certainly not externally?

For all of us, in virtually every industry, those days are gone. Commoditized markets have significantly shortened the business cycle. Now, every business must:

•do more with less
•innovate more, and more quickly
•be agile and adaptable
•avoid holding on to old paradigms or dated thinking

For many large, global organizations, the dream of being fast, lean and agile seems perpetually out of reach. We know this because almost 70% of strategic initiatives are never successfully executed , and a 2010 Harvard Business Review survey showed that just 37% of readers felt their companies were “very good” or “excellent” at strategy execution.

As the pace of change in the world around us increases, and the business cycle contracts, the reality is that strategy is nothing without speed of execution, and most of us are failing that critical test.