Given that the service industry employs about 80 percent of the U.S. workforce, many organizations are focused on measuring employee productivity and improving it. Unlike the manufacturing sector, in which employee productivity can be measured by the number of items produced, in the service industry you need to know how the service was delivered, as well as the degree to which the service impacted the customer experience. The good news is that there are many ways to measure the productivity of employees in the service sector, and you can improve employee productivity with training and development activities.

Ways to Measure Service Sector Employee Productivity

The traditional employee productivity calculation equals total output divided by total input, for example, the number of cars (output) produced during a 12-hour shift (input) in a manufacturing plant. But for organizations in the service industry, a purely quantitative method of measuring employee productivity doesn’t work quite as well. In the service sector, the input (for example, decision-making, judgment) and output (customer experience, achievement of performance objectives, and so forth) may be harder to measure and are subject to variation from employee to employee.

Instead of focusing on the number of customers served or hours worked, an effective strategy for measuring employee productivity in the service industry takes into account a range of factors that will vary depending on the sector, company, or employee role.

Here are a few examples:

Customer Satisfaction: A focus on quality outcomes rather than number of transactions often makes sense for service sector employees, because the service industry provides customer experiences rather than products. For example, a customer service representative’s patience, professionalism, and friendliness matters as much as the number of calls taken in the space of an hour.

Employee Engagement: According to research conducted by Gallup, teams with high employee engagement are 21 percent more productive than teams with lower engagement rates. While engagement is no guarantee of employee productivity, when employees are engaged and have the desire to perform at their best, they may be better positioned to do so than those who lack engagement.

Performance Against Goals: Productivity can be measured according to how successfully employees meet their performance goals. As an example, a salesperson has a goal to increase business from new clients by 10 percent. Business development productivity requires that salespeople deliver a high level of service to potential clients. The degree to which the employee meets the goal shows his or her level of business development productivity.

Examples of Employee Productivity Measures by Sector

The following examples illustrate how the factors described above help with measuring employee productivity in different service sectors:

Transportation: Instead of focusing on the number of routes a train conductor completes each year, it would be more effective to measure the conductor’s productivity by the number of on-time arrivals or the length of time gone without a safety violation or accident. Strong marks in these areas also help build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Food Service: The fast pace of many food service establishments requires engaged employees who want to provide excellent customer experiences. The productivity of waiters, chefs, and hostesses is not measured only by the number of customers served, but also the degree to which their engagement enables them to provide great food, courtesy, and a swift resolution to any customer complaints.

Merchandise Retailing: It’s true that dollars per sale and sales per employee matter when looking at the productivity of retail employees. However, as one study found, high engagement among retail employees not only increases their productivity, but also results in significant reductions in inventory shrinkage, waste, cash loss, and lost sales.

Healthcare: A quantitative measure of employee productivity for a hospital might be the number of patients seen by a nurse in the course of a workday. However, that might not adequately measure the nurse’s productivity if each patient didn’t receive proper care and attention. In an age when the patient experience is a critical component of a hospital’s competitive advantage, a more important measure of the nurse’s productivity would be the number of satisfied patients, which can be quantified with patient experience surveys.

Improve Employee Productivity with Training and Development

There is no one way to measure employee productivity in the service industry that works for every organization. However, many factors together compose an effective strategy for getting at the heart of employee productivity.

At the end of the day, once you’ve effectively measured employee productivity for your specific industry, the next important step is to work to improve the areas that need it. A combination of employee development and training exercises can improve productivity and performance, leading to increased customer satisfaction, more efficient service delivery, and highly engaged employees.

Introduction

Introducing new concepts, systems, or processes in a work environment is rarely as simple as sending an email and immediately getting the desired results. Successfully convincing individuals to change their behavior in the workplace requires:

• Clear communication about expectations
• An organizational training program that provides the necessary skills
• Consistent reinforcement and measurement

This might seem like a tall order, and indeed it does require a comprehensive overall strategy, but there are some simple change management activities you can do on a daily basis.

Meetings are the most logical place for change management activities because you have the attention of the entire group at the same time. You can ensure that people hear the message and create a greater likelihood of understanding what you say. Consider adding these change management activities to your next meeting agenda:

1. Status Updates

Have an agenda item for status updates about initiatives occurring in your organization. For example, if your organization is shifting to a customer-centric culture, a sales staff meeting might include an update about the new sales process that is under development. This is also an excellent opportunity to gather input from the sales team about how to be more customer centric and get the team to start thinking in that mindset.

Status updates should include:

• What initiatives are currently happening
• The status of each initiative
• The next steps for each initiative

The individuals providing the updates will have to stay on top of their assigned tasks, and others will feel more involved in the process, especially if they have the opportunity to provide feedback during status updates.

2. Reinforcement Exercises

If your strategy includes organizational training, one of the most important change management activities you can do is reinforcement exercises. The human brain will only retain so much information (10-30%) after a training session unless you actively recall the lessons learned. Adding a quick reinforcement exercise such as a quiz, game, or discussion about how to apply the new knowledge in the workplace will keep the information fresh in the minds of participants and encourage them to apply and use their new skills.

3. Introduce the Next Initiative

Make time to discuss the next change that is on the horizon, even if you don’t plan to roll it out for several months. Communicating early about changes to come will allow individuals to mentally prepare in advance. Providing regular updates about the plans in the pipeline will reduce the inevitable anxiety that people feel about change. Giving individuals an opportunity to provide feedback will make them feel more invested in the process and increase the likelihood that they will embrace the new systems. Clear communication about upcoming initiatives also demonstrates that leadership has a strategy in place and a plan for executing it.

4. Recognize Successes

Create an agenda item that prompts you to identify all of the successful milestones or accomplishments since the previous meeting. These could be as simple as an individual who exhibited one of the desirable behaviors identified in a recent training, or as significant as a team who measurably improved their sales numbers. When individuals know that leadership is paying attention and that they will be rewarded for their efforts, they are more likely to adopt the changes you are introducing and more likely to perform at their peak. Many leaders don’t realize how impactful recognition can be, especially in a public form like a team meeting.

5. Action Items

Every productive meeting should include action items that are assigned to individuals and have clear deadlines. Action items go hand-in-hand with status updates on your agenda. Everybody knows that they will be expected to report back to the group, increasing the likelihood that they will complete their assigned tasks. Action items also provide the benefit of keeping a project moving forward.

It’s unrealistic to expect individuals to change their behavior without some motivation. Including these change management activities in your meetings helps maintain momentum, gives leadership a forum for introducing new changes to come, and increases accountability. What agenda items did you include in your last meeting?

Contents

• Teamwork and Collaboration
• Ethics and Integrity
• Adaptability
• Innovation and Continuous Learning
• Communication
• Emotional Intelligence
• Leadership

Introduction

Today’s business challenges compel organizations to identify new, more creative ways to enhance shareholder value and the customer experience. As a member of the C-suite, you bear considerable responsibility for building a productive workforce and high-performance culture. Moreover, you want that accountability to go beyond the C-suite and filter through the rest of the organization. In the PWC 2017 CEO Survey on Global Talent, 77 percent of CEOs expressed concern about the availability of core competencies such as creativity and innovation among their workforces. You don’t have to be among them. A focus on the development of seven core competencies can ensure you are building a workforce that possesses the skills you need for short- and long-term success.

1. Teamwork and Collaboration

You probably already recognize that collaboration among employees yields high idea generation and more efficient problem-solving. Tools such as Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud technology provide more seamless ways for employees to collaborate and leverage each other’s strengths. Other solutions that will drive productive teamwork throughout your organization and go beyond technology include training initiatives that help you identify and duplicate the qualities of your existing high-performance teams. Furthermore, you can support employee teamwork and collaboration by building a culture that not only places value on effective teamwork, but also trains employees to be better problem-solvers and communicators within a team environment.

2. Ethics and Integrity

A recent study of ethical trends among CEOs noted increased public scrutiny of C-suite executives and their ethical (or not) behavior. You want your employees and your customers to know that you are committed to doing the right thing, whether it’s in how you approach new business opportunities or how you treat employees. Therefore, ethics and integrity should be woven into your culture and reinforced with coaching and training that helps every individual understand your commitment to ethical behavior.

3.  Adaptability

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, individuals who can shift their behaviors and mindset to align with changes in work culture and environment are more valuable than ever. As your organization grows, your systems and processes will advance in complexity as well. You need your workforce to not only adapt to those changes but in some cases lead the change. As new technologies such as big data, AI, and robotics continue to change the way people work and interact, your workforce will benefit from tailored employee development experiences that will strengthen their change management capabilities and provide the tools needed to adapt to shifts in their work environment.

4. Innovation and Continuous Learning

Organizational growth is the outcome of innovation and a commitment to doing things faster, more efficiently, and with greater value to the customer. When a business challenge requires an innovative solution, you expect employees to consider new processes or technology and be willing to step into the unfamiliar. But can innovation and creative thinking be taught? The answer is yes—with the right tools and environment, you can transform your workforce into a powerful hub for innovation.

5. Communication

The perennial employee development challenge is how to help managers and employees communicate better, with greater clarity, honesty, and effectiveness. Individuals can become better performers if they know how to actively listen to understand colleagues and customers better. Also, people managers need to develop strong communication skills in order to convey performance expectations and solicit and deliver feedback effectively. As a leadership team, you can make communication skills training a key component of your employee development efforts.

6. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 co-author Travis Bradberry found that 90 percent of high performers exhibit high emotional intelligence. You may have seen within your own workforce how individuals with a high EQ (emotional quotient) are able to overcome difficult personalities, and seem to effortlessly guide the behavior of others without ruffling feathers or aggravating egos. These are the types of behaviors that employees can learn to emulate as they engage in activities that challenge them to practice empathy and patience with coworkers.

7. Leadership

You are likely already aware that perhaps the single most important employee development area that supports organizational capability is effective leadership. Strong leaders empower others to be effective collaborators, communicators, and decision-makers, which will, in turn, provide you with a competitive advantage in times of growth and change. When you partner with HR and a trusted leadership development partner, you can provide leadership development experiences and training that will help to build strong leaders at every level of the organization.

Use Experiential Learning to Address Key Areas of Employee Development

These seven employee development areas can be targeted through a practical competency framework, and aligned with an experiential training program that will help individuals learn by doing. Strong leaders aren’t created by accident but through relevant experiences delivered in a context that encourages learning and further development. With experiential training, your employees engage in employee development that drives lasting behavior change and sets the organization on a course for success and further growth.

Having a culture of collaboration helps organizations maximize employee knowledge and capabilities. Ideas and information spread more easily when employees communicate and collaborate across functional and departmental lines, which can have a positive impact on company performance. A study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that companies with a collaborative culture are 5.5 times more likely to be high-performing than companies that don’t have one.

Creating a culture of collaboration can be a struggle for companies because of unclear expectations, lack of follow-through, or employees that may not have the skill or desire to collaborate. Here are five strategies that can help to overcome those challenges and learn how to transform your culture to be more collaborative:

1. Communicate a Clear Vision

Collaboration can look different from company to company, so it makes sense to establish your desired behaviors and attributes and what the organization will look like once a collaborative culture has taken hold. The vision for a collaborative culture needs to be communicated broadly to employees and constantly reinforced so that it doesn’t become just a “flavor of the month.” A clear vision that cascades from senior leadership helps employees see a line of sight to the end goal, allowing them to build commitment as the organization moves closer to realizing the vision.

2. Hire and Develop Collaborative Leaders

Like any important company objective, building a collaborative culture requires the buy-in and support of company leaders. Without leaders to carry the company vision, efforts to build a culture of collaboration are likely to suffer. Some ways to gain leadership support include:

• Attracting and hiring leaders who have a collaborative management style, a strong commitment to teamwork and resource-sharing, and the ability to encourage collaboration in their teams.
• Implementing a leadership training and development program that teaches them how to communicate expectations, model collaborative behavior through their example, and coach others to improve.
• Recognizing and rewarding leaders who demonstrate a strong commitment to the company’s vision for a collaborative work culture.

3. Create Opportunities for Collaboration

Collaboration can’t happen if employees aren’t in situations where they need to reach across team lines to accomplish their goals. Joint team projects, cross-functional focus groups, and company chat rooms built around a common company objective are examples of ways to bring teams together so they can build shared experiences and benefit from each other’s ideas and capabilities. Experiential learning, where employees learn by doing, can also help individuals learn and practice the behaviors they can use on a daily basis to be more collaborative. Not everyone will be comfortable collaborating at first, so it might be necessary to provide training that encourages them to do so and equips them with the skills they need to succeed in the new culture.

4. Leverage Social Collaboration Tools

In the digital age, internal social networks and cloud-based tools can be instrumental in helping employees collaborate. Collaboration is no longer limited to a group of people in a conference room or on a conference call. A survey of business professionals found that 83 percent said they depend on technology to collaborate, while 82 percent said the loss of collaboration technology would negatively impact them. Collaboration tools can also help to bring teams together that work in different geographies and time zones, breaking down barriers that might previously have prevented individuals from communicating frequently.

5. Reinforce and Revisit

Creating a culture of collaboration, like any important company initiative, doesn’t happen overnight, especially if the organization has historically been divided into silos and is not used to working collaboratively. Continuous monitoring and reinforcement are necessary to ensure sustained behavior change and prevent employees from falling back into their old behaviors. Reinforcement activities can be most effective when employees have the tools they need to be effective and leaders are equipped to answer questions, problem-solve, and provide ongoing employee feedback. Examples of reinforcement tools and activities include:

• Team building activities that encourage individuals to practice their skills, build trust, and reinforce supportive relationships. These can include a major company event off-site or smaller-scale daily activities.
• Surveys that gauge employees’ views of the company’s culture and how it impacts their behavior.
• Assessments and content boosts that reinforce what employees have already learned in earlier training.

Conclusion: Creating a Culture of Collaboration Is Possible!

Companies sometimes struggle to foster a culture of collaboration, but it’s not always for lack of trying. Any kind of culture shift is no small undertaking and takes time, patience, and regular reinforcement. With a clear vision, strong leaders, and tools and experiences that support collaborative behaviors, a culture of collaboration is possible.

Leaders are responsible not just for managing and leading talent, but also for helping individuals develop and grow so that they can perform to their potential. Though most leaders would agree that developing talent is important, training alone is not enough. Leadership requires not only setting expectations and providing feedback, but also positioning employees for success and providing an environment that encourages continuous learning and performance improvement. Here are four things leaders can do to develop organizational talent that reaches their full potential:

Delegate

Leaders can make considerable progress in developing talent by delegating tasks that challenge these individuals to try something new. Delegation doesn’t mean just handing off a task to someone, but going through a process of discussion, explanation, and coaching to help the person learn and perform at a higher level. Leaders can identify which responsibilities to delegate (and whom to delegate them to) by communicating expectations, providing regular feedback, and then trusting individuals so that they can take accountability for the outcome of the delegated task. As individuals take on more newly delegated responsibilities, they will grow more confident in their ability to perform at a consistently higher level.

Coach and Mentor

Coaching isn’t limited to a one-on-one relationship established only for that purpose. In fact, leaders have opportunities to coach their people on a daily basis, and can often provide useful in-the-moment coaching that helps to accelerate employee development. Coaching is more than giving advice and suggestions for improvement. It requires first making a connection and showing employees that you care about their development and aspirations for growth, and then providing opportunities for them to learn and grow. Managers can coach and mentor by regularly asking employees about their career aspirations, discussing options for training, and identifying assignments and other opportunities to learn. Once leaders have established a connection with individuals, they can more effectively provide coaching that includes observing employee behavior and communicating helpful strategies for skill building and development.

Set an Example

The behavior of leaders can have a major influence on employee behavior. One survey found that 42 percent of new managers developed their management style by observing a previous manager. Leaders can find success in developing talent by focusing on continuous improvement and showing others through their own example the importance of developing leadership strengths. Leaders who demonstrate a desire to become better through leadership development and building their skills in other areas show through their example the value of expanding and growing as a professional. When employees see leaders sharpening their own skills, they are more likely to follow that behavior and seek out development opportunities for themselves.

Identify Targeted Training

Training that targets a specific area, such as communication, teamwork, or leadership development, can give employees the necessary building blocks to consistently perform at a higher level. However, training delivered in a vacuum won’t produce much in the way of results. Training activities should mimic the real world in order to offer maximum value to employees and teams. Experiential learning is an ideal choice for developing talent because it allows employees to learn by doing and includes exercises that parallel real challenges employees face at work. When employees can see a strong connection between what they learn and practice in training and what they experience at work, they’re more likely to use newly learned skills on the job.

Talent development is a necessary component of ensuring your workforce possesses the skills and knowledge required for future growth. Helping employees learn and grow requires a combination of targeted training and support from leaders to help employees achieve their aspirations and perform to their potential.

Meetings are an important way to keep your team in sync and your initiatives running smoothly. Whether you need to share information, gather feedback, or make decisions, there are a plethora of positive effects of having weekly staff meetings.

So, what makes a meeting effective? According to a leadership lesson presented by the Association of American Medical Colleges, “Effective meetings allow for open conversation that draws upon each members’ knowledge, skills, and perspectives to solve problems and to support one another in achieving the collective goals.” This may seem like a simple definition, but it takes skill to consistently run meetings that fit that description. The better your leaders are at running effective meetings, the more you will witness the following four benefits within your organization.

1. Increased Engagement and Collaboration

When led well, meetings offer each person the opportunity to participate and provide input. To engage each individual, effective facilitators focus on asking questions and guiding the conversation so that everyone understands that their perspectives and ideas are valued. These discussions can even spark collaborative brainstorming sessions that produce new ideas and creative solutions.

Practical Tip

When preparing for a meeting, create a list of questions that will help stimulate discussion. If there are particular people who don’t regularly speak up, ask them to share their input with the group.  

2. Increased Accountability

A good meeting leader is skilled at creating an environment in which everybody feels that their contribution is valued. This helps make participants feel more comfortable taking on assignments and makes it clear that every task has an impact on the project as a whole. Committing to a task in a meeting often has more weight than doing so in a one-on-one situation or via email. When saying “yes” to an assignment in a meeting, individuals feel more accountable to the group and are more motivated to complete their piece of the project. Capturing action items and responsibilities in the meeting also increases personal accountability because the team will be able to review the task assignments in the meeting notes.

Practical Tip

Conclude every meeting by summarizing the list of action items, including who is responsible for them and when the tasks are due. After the meeting, follow up via email or your project management tool to reinforce the commitments that were made.

3. A Shared Sense of Purpose

Clearly stating the purpose of the meeting and providing an agenda in advance ensures that everybody is on the same page about why it is being held and what they need to do to come prepared. A skilled leader then uses the agenda to keep the discussion moving in the direction of the team’s goals. Sharing the agenda and goals with the team provides a shared sense of purpose because everyone understands the importance of the meeting and why they have been included. This shared purpose is motivating both during the meeting and after, when the team disperses to work on their individual action items.

Practical Tip

When inviting people to a meeting, provide an agenda within the invite that clearly defines the meeting objectives. During the meeting, if the conversation starts to wander, circle back to those objectives to keep the meeting on track.

4. Opportunities for Personal Growth

A truly effective meeting creates opportunities for each person to develop important skills. The facilitator is refining their leadership skills by practicing effective communication techniques and motivating the group to be accountable for their commitments. Participants are able to witness the benefits of a well-run meeting and adopt the skills and behaviors modeled by the leader. An effective meeting also enables participants to challenge themselves and try something new. When tasks are being discussed and assigned, participants can volunteer to take on the work that interests them most. Even if they have limited knowledge or experience, they can join a group that will allow them to learn and develop their skills in that area.

Practical Tip

To help individuals learn new skills, pair newer employees up with more experienced team members and give them a challenging task to complete as a team. This enables the less experienced individuals to learn from the expertise of their partners and gain new skills in a supportive and productive way.

Conclusion

While this is not an exhaustive list of all the positive effects of having weekly staff meetings, it does give you a clear indication there are many. In addition to keeping everyone on the same page, well-run meetings also help increase engagement, collaboration, accountability, and personal development. However, not all leaders possess the necessary skill set to run an effective meeting. Fortunately, this can be taught and honed through training and practice. To learn more about planning and running meetings in your organization, download our free guide, A Guide to Running Effective Meetings.

Time management is a skill, which means it can be taught, learned, practiced, and refined. As with any skill, it takes effort to improve, especially because getting better at time management often requires learning new behaviors. However, the effort is well worth it because when your time is managed well, you can be more productive and perform at a higher level. Work on these five time management habits to create the space you need to complete more work in a day.

1. Make a schedule and stick to it

Most people use a work calendar to schedule meetings and events. However, you can also use it to block out time to work on tasks. In addition to prompting you to do the work in a given time frame, this lets others know when you don’t want to be disturbed, which can cut down on distractions that reduce productivity. Scheduling tasks also gives you the freedom to silence your phone and close your email app because your time is clearly blocked off as busy.

To get the most from this habit, schedule your tasks around the times that you tend to be most productive. Be sure to start each day by looking at your schedule, not by jumping on the first task somebody asks you about.

2. Set clear expectations and deadlines

When you schedule tasks, it becomes much easier for you to let others know when they can expect the work to be completed. Setting deadlines for every task is a great way to ensure that items don’t consistently fall to the bottom of your list. Although it is important to prioritize, consistently ignoring non-urgent tasks is a surefire way to create unnecessary stress for yourself in the future. It’s common for people to naturally gravitate toward working on the tasks that were most recently assigned, but this isn’t always the best approach.

If you are a manager, set clear expectations around deadlines and work with your employees to help them prioritize tasks. When assigning tasks, let employees know when you expect the work to be done and how long a particular task usually takes so they can better manage their time.

3. Break down large tasks into smaller steps

If a to-do list is made up of large, multi-step tasks or entire projects, it can feel overwhelming to even the most experienced professional. Breaking up large tasks into smaller steps makes it more manageable and allows you to feel like you are steadily moving forward as you check items off your list.

If there is a task on your list that you always skip over because it just feels too big, take a few minutes to break it down into smaller chunks that you know you can tackle. At the other end of the spectrum, don’t allow yourself to stretch out small tasks to take up more time. If something should take just 15 minutes, do it within the allotted time frame and then move on.

4. Take breaks

Build breaks into your schedule. Actually put them on the calendar so you’re prompted to take a time-out during the course of the day. It’s also important to recognize when you need a break, whether it’s scheduled or not. Taking a short break—even just 10 minutes—allows you to return to your work feeling refreshed and more focused.

It can be difficult for employees to feel comfortable taking breaks, especially in a work culture that values busyness. However, being busy is not the same as being productive. Taking frequent short breaks can actually boost productivity and allow you to get more done in your day.

5. Make lists and prioritize tasks

Whether you prefer to use an app or stick with pen and paper, lists are an excellent visual reminder of what you need to get done and which tasks you should prioritize. Using multiple lists for different projects or personal tasks makes it easier to shift gears and focus on the immediate tasks at hand.

Remember that lists only work when you actually use them. It’s not enough to write a list and then never reference it. Keep your lists visible throughout the day so you can cross off tasks that have been completed and be reminded about what to focus on next. The more specific your tasks are, the more likely you will be to address them, so use clear action words to prompt the appropriate activity.

Link time management to productivity

Everybody has different systems for time management, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as they are effective. When considering your own time management behaviors, ask yourself whether they increase productivity. If not, use the five tips above or think of your own ways to adapt your time management practices so you will have more dedicated time to get work done. Read more practical tips in our 8-Step Guide to Time Management & Productivity.

As a leader, you have the power and skills to diagnose challenges and capitalize on strengths in a timely and effective manner—but business excellence doesn’t stop there. More often than not, the best-laid plans go awry because big visions are met with an unclear road map for execution.

Strategy vs. Execution

For leaders, strategy and business execution are uniquely important. Strategic skills allow a leader to create policies, establish direction, and determine how to effectively allocate resources to achieve a larger goal. Execution, on the other hand, involves the tactical, practical skills needed to put a plan into motion. Where strategic thinking allows a leader to craft the future of an organization by making broad decisions, the tactical skills of execution are required to bring the vision to life. How do you know which to focus your energy and time on?

You Can’t Have One Without the Other

The truth is, the best leaders balance strategic thinking and tactics. Building a strategy that embodies your organization is great, but if you don’t have the chops to turn that strategy into an actionable plan, it’s just a pipe dream. Many great visions fall apart before they even get off the ground because of a lack of planning.

A great tactical thinker can take the strategic vision, understand the objective or goal, and break it down into operational pieces. This allows for the planning of actionable steps and realistic resource allocations in order to achieve the desired outcome. For many leaders, however, their strength is either in knowing what to do (strategy) or in how to do it (execution)—but not both. When a leader is balanced in both areas, strategic thinking takes tactical realities into consideration and those very realities are driven by the strategic plan. The question is: How does a leader find the right balance and training to be both a strategic thinker and to thoughtfully execute the organization’s vision?

Achieving Strategic and Executional Excellence

Although it’s critical for organizational leaders to be able to develop strategy, their skills are irrelevant if they can’t follow through. An agile leader is someone who is a pro at crafting and executing organizational strategy. This involves breaking the larger vision down into actionable steps, establishing a plan to track progress, ensuring the right stakeholders are placed in the right roles, and remaining flexible to address any challenges or priority shifts that come up. Once the strategy is set in motion, it’s important for a leader to be able to change tactics—not strategy—to achieve the most successful and impactful results as competing priorities come in.

One of the best ways for a leader to master the arts of both strategy and business execution is through experiential-based training. Learning in this way works because it mimics the same challenges leaders face every day in the workplace, allowing them to learn by doing—not by simply watching, reading, or listening. In fact, retention rates for training that use experiential methods are as high as 80 to 90 percent, compared to traditional learning environments whose rates are just 5 percent. Experiential learning is immersive and engaging—and fun—and puts leaders in the types of scenarios they’ll face every day while executing strategy, giving them the opportunity to practice their new leadership skills in a risk-free, controlled environment. This allows leaders to leave training with the confidence, knowledge, and skills to turn the organization’s vision and strategy into action back at the office.

Strategy and business execution are both vital to any organization’s success, and leaders must be ready, willing, and able to craft the vision and make it actionable. Becoming strategically and executionally excellent is the answer to giving your organization a competitive edge, which can improve engagement and drive results.