Make human capital the creative core of strategy execution

Corporate executives must embrace a different way of thinking if they want to execute their strategy. It is one that makes human capital the centrepiece of their business strategy. Their imperative is to build organisational capabilities that support the innovation, collaboration and continuous learning essential for success in a complex, fast-changing environment.

A workforce made up of talented, motivated, and engaged knowledge workers is a huge advantage for successful strategy execution. 

Strategy execution is doomed to failure unless knowledge workers:

• Fully understand the goals.
• Have the required skills, competencies, and talent to implement and achieve them.
• Have the required execution capabilities, resources, and capacity.
• Are motivated to do so.

As such, organisations should hire candidates or assign employees based on their ability to positively support the corporate strategy and organisational culture, and add tangible and measurable value.

In particular, organisations should also establish and quantify direct cause and effect linkage and relationship between employee engagement and specific business results and performance (e.g., reduced shrinkage, increased sales, etc.).

As strategic initiatives continually change to suit the ever-evolving external and competitive environment, it is unfortunately very difficult for organisations to realign their workforce and HR strategies and plans constantly and to constantly fiddle around with well-established compensation and benefits strategies just to keep up. This creates a problem where there is a real disconnect between HR practices and corporate strategy.