Robin Speculand, Strategy and Digital Implementation Specialist, Author, World’s Best Bank
Robin Speculand passionately lives and breathes strategy implementation.
Podcast
Overview
Although every business or company seems to start with the perfect strategy in place, not all businesses are successful. What’s the reason behind this? Many companies fail at implementing their strategies, and without action, no matter how good an idea may be, it is not likely to succeed.
Today, we have invited an extremely accomplished and talented entrepreneur, Robin Speculand, to share his knowledge and insights on this topic, an area in which he is an authority.
“My passion is to help organizations and leaders make the impact for their own customers and business.”- Robin
About Robin Speculand
Robin Speculand is a strategy and implementation specialist. He has authored five books, the latest of which is “World’s Best Bank- A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation”.
“My passion is to help organizations and leaders make an impact for their own customers and business.”
Discussion
Why do you focus on strategy implementation more than strategy?
His simple answer to this question is that he likes to see the impact. He says that having the best strategy won’t help if you are unable to drive the impact through implementation.
“Customers don’t notice your strategy. they notice your implementation.”
What are some of the challenges in implementation once a strategy has been finalized?
Robin says that while strategy is about making the right choices, as in creating a startup, having a mission, and choosing the platform, implementation is all about taking the right actions. The challenge is the gap between thought and action. And Robin posits the second biggest challenge to be the lack of importance leaders give to the process of implementation after the strategy has been made. They believe it is easy to implement and that’s why they neglect it and mostly fail. The third biggest challenge is poor communication between the leaders and the team regarding implementation, adds Robin.
Once the strategy document has been prepared, how should be it implemented?
Robin asserts that although leaders are responsible for crafting the strategy, research shows that only 8% of the leaders have the ability to craft and implement the strategy. They either lack the skills or lack the tools, framework, and structure to do this. So, Robin’s company provides courses and programs to help leaders with this.
What’s the importance of digital in implementation and strategy?
In response to this question, Robin first clears that “it’s not about having a digital strategy but having a strategy in the digital world.’‘ He says that pandemic has compelled every implementation to have some component of digital. Thus the important question is which aspect of the emerging technologies is being adopted by businesses to drive implementation. This way of seeing digital allows companies to keep up with the external digital changes and adapt according to them.
