He also introduces his 6C’s execution framework divided into two phases: setting the stage (cocreation, clarity, capacity) and showtime (communication, coordination, coaching). Ertell further emphasizes the importance of slowing down to speed up, involving both advocates and detractors in strategy development, and treating strategy and execution as one integrated process rather than separate phases.
From Vision to Results
The business-oriented, no-nonsense guide to execution draws on the author’s 30-plus years of experience leading execution at global brands like Nike, Sur La Table, Borders, and Tower Records. No doubt, Ertell has some compelling brand stories to share, and the pitfalls and potential of strategy and execution. So just what inspired Ertell to write his book?
Ertell relates, “One of the most common data points out there is that most strategies fail. And the number one reason most strategies fail is poor execution. Yet we have thousands of books on how to write strategies, and there’s just not that much out there about how to execute. I really felt like I wanted to help people address this issue. I’ve been an operator in many businesses for decades. I had pretty good success, so I wanted to write something about execution from an operator’s perspective.”
He also kept in mind other executives and their perspectives as well. The book interviews a range of other business executives from all sorts of different industries, different sizes of companies, different ownership models, whether it’s public or private equity or independently owned. Everyone, it seems, can fall into the strategy trap.
“It’s a really practical guide to how to go about actually bringing your strategy to life successfully,” he says.
Introducing the 6C’s Framework
The corporate innovation community is certainly no stranger to the strategy trap, either. It is a common challenge in this environment when attempting to move from ideation to implementation of strategies, dealing with a product development pipeline, bringing in stakeholders, and so on.
All Things Innovation asked Ertell to break down his 6C’s Execution Framework, which is a viable ecosystem for the innovation professional as well.
“The 6C’s can be broken up into two phases. There’s setting the stage and showtime,” Ertell relates. “Within each of those phases are three C’s. Setting the stage is cocreation, clarity, and capacity. And that’s all about bringing a variety of people together to build your strategy so that you get lots of different viewpoints from people who are actually going to be involved in bringing it to life. You get alignment that way. You get validation, and you get commitment. And then clarity—you’ve got to spend time making it simple, easy to understand, and meaningful to people.”
He adds, “Capacity is super critical. You can’t launch some new innovation or new strategy over the top of the existing business if you don’t make room for it. We talk a lot about that. That’s the first phase, setting the stage.”
The second phase is showtime, with three more C’s: communication, coordination, and coaching.
“You have to get the message out there,” Ertell says. “This is going to be a big change. Get that message out early. Make it loud so people hear it and be continuously talking about it. Coordination is all about basic planning, blocking and tackling to make sure that you’ve got clear accountability and clear ways to understand progress as you’re moving forward. And then coaching is really a subset of overall leadership, but it’s an active leadership. It’s the part that is about motivation, creating incentives, and making quick decisions—and pivoting when things go wrong. So it’s really that entire system that works together to bring things to life. They all matter, but it does start with cocreation—that really sets the stage for all the rest.”
Is the Lone Inventor Gone Forever?
With so much emphasis today on cocreation and collaboration, we wondered about the concept of the lone inventor. It might be a cliché, but the lone inventor is still a prevalent concept in innovation. Think of the lone inventor, toiling away in his basement or garage lab and you get the idea behind the concept.
“The lone innovator might be able to do a lot on his or her own,” says Ertell, “but you’re unlikely to bring that entire innovation to the breadth of an enterprise or bring it to the market without help. Anytime you have to start involving other people, then it gets more complicated, number one. But you have to have some structure and some discipline around how you’re going to bring people together so that they all understand the North Star that you’re going for. They all need to understand how you’re defining success and their role.”
Ertell adds, “The clearer you define it, on the big picture, the North Star, with clear objectives and clear expected outcomes, the more you can delegate the ‘how’ to people. You might be an innovator who’s maybe an engineer who has done some kind of cool innovation engineering, but, ultimately, you might need a marketer to get that message out there. How are you laying out what you’re trying to accomplish, what you hope this will do for an end customer in a way that the marketer can understand it and then put their own expertise into it to drive that forward for both of you?”
Lessons Learned on Execution
The book also has a lot of examples of what success and failure have looked like from other industries. Just what is a notable strategy that succeeded or failed because of execution?
“I open the book with one that’s failed. It’s a famous story about Ron Johnson who was the guy who led the team that built the Apple Stores very successfully, but then he became the CEO of JCPenney. And when he got to JCPenney, he made some very quick strategy decisions to really change the way the company operated, and he rolled them out immediately to all stores. Boom. No testing. Out really fast to all the stores, and it did not work. He did not do all the things I talk about in terms of the 6C’s to bring people together, to get people on board, to help kind of really foster this forward. The result? The business dropped 25%. The company’s stock dropped 55%, and Johnson was out in 17 months,” he says.
Of course, there are also success stories that Ertell has shared from the book, and his own career. That includes his time at Nike.
Ertell relates, “I was running global retail operations, working with stores across the world, and one thing that we found was that store managers were spending a ton of time trying to get data to understand how their stores operated. We recognized there was an opportunity to use mobile phones and get them the right kind of reporting so they could drive their business on a regular basis and have the information at their fingertips.”
“So we cocreated with all these stores,” he says. “We figured out exactly what metrics they needed. We made it super clear for them. They were the right metrics, so it was very meaningful and they could get involved in it. We spent a lot of time helping them understand what we were about to do, what we did, and that this was going to be beneficial to them, and then coached and managed them through it. That was a very successful rollout that was widely praised by the teams who actually got the end product.”
Slowing Down to Speed Up
What can leadership do to address the strategy trap? How can it be avoided or at least addressed?
“First, just to define what the strategy trap is, it’s when leaders get very excited about the idea of the strategy and the presentation of the strategy, and they don’t take the time to do all the things I talked about in terms of the 6C’s. They just kind of launch it out there. That happens all the time in companies. So slowing down to speed up is super important,” says Ertell.
He adds, “I think it’s also very important to recognize that strategy and execution are not two different things. They are one in the same. And I always say that that strategy is kind of the early part of execution, not something that happens before execution. You have to bring people together. Cocreation is so important.”
It’s also key to bring in the right (or wrong) people. “Bring people in to help create the strategy,” he says. “Figure out and define your North Star, where you’re headed, and what your expected outcomes are, but bring people in from across the organization. Bring in people who are advocates about the idea, but bring in detractors too. Bring in the haters. Bring them in early because they’re going to represent other people in the organization who are going to resist things. The earlier you can get them in and understand why they’re resisting, work through those issues, the better off you’re going to be as you roll it out.”
“The number one advice I got from people I talked to for the book, was slow down to speed up,” advises Ertell. “And what they meant by that was not go slow. They just meant if you’re thinking about a car on a curvy road, a race car, you slow down into the curve so that you can accelerate out of it. And that’s what they meant. Take time. Go quickly to figure out all these 6C’s. But get that stuff right first so that when you get it out to the rest of the team, you’re able to move quickly because you’re not doing a lot of rework because people don’t understand it or resist it.”
Getting Stuck in the Moment
If a corporate innovator is stuck in the strategy trap right now, what would Ertell tell them to do? What’s that first step to try to regain momentum?
Ertell says, “Make sure that you’re really clear about whatever this innovation you have is. How is it addressing a broader need for the business? What is that overall objective for the customer, for example? What would success look like as this rolled out? Get really clear about that. Then start bringing some people in to help work with you to figure it out. What’s it going to take? Let’s sort of talk through it. Figure out where the strengths are of this idea, where the weaknesses are, what are the needs in terms of marketing or sales or supply chain.”
He adds, “Have we thought through all the components that are going to be necessary to scale it out there? Work through that stuff as early as you can. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can do this in iterations. That’s why I call it a system too. You may have a pilot that you want to start with. You still should work through all these different ideas about what that pilot is going to be. How do you make it as successful as you can? Go quickly on that, but work through all the things that need to be involved. Work through all 6C’s and get it out there quickly and then iterate.”
“If you’re going to involve other people, you have to get other people in the room.”
Editor’s Note: Check out Kevin Ertell’s The Strategy Trap: Why Companies Fail at Execution and How to Get It Right, available on Amazon
