A brief history of strategy acceleration

The Emergence of Strategy Acceleration

As a business leader, you know the importance of having a strategy in place for managing a successful business. However, executing that strategy can often be a challenge. With the emergence of strategy acceleration and business agility, there are new ways to approach strategy execution that can lead to faster and more successful results. Let’s start with a short historical look at strategy work. 

In the mid-1900s, strategies began to be required for managing a successful business. However, as time went on, it became clear that long-term strategic plans with no anchoring and steering by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were not enough.

By the year 2000, research showed that nine out of 10 strategy implementations failed to be executed successfully. This led to the emergence of strategy acceleration and business agility, which are characterized by the following:

• Adjustment to an increasingly changing world with demands for a faster pace of change
• A need for a shorter timeline to execute plans (1-3 years maximum) and a faster strategy execution
• Measuring both results and progress to ensure that the correct actions are taken in pursuit of the target
• Focus on fewer, but the most important goals