Planview Sees How Leaders Accelerate On-Strategy Delivery in Times of Change

March 29, 2021

Planview published a global report that unlocks how companies are successfully responding to continuous market disruption, accelerating innovation and executing on their business strategies. Based on a first-of-its-kind study, the report, titled “The State of Strategy Execution: Embracing Uncertainty to Adapt at Speed,” uncovers why many companies are challenged to pivot strategy in times of change, and provides pragmatic recommendations for companies to adapt more quickly to shifting conditions and disruptive events, and deliver quality business outcomes.

“This study was designed to answer a deceptively simple question: Why can some companies quickly adapt and even accelerate strategy execution during times of significant change, and others just get by?,” said Patrick Tickle, Chief Product Officer at Planview. “That question is of utmost importance not only today while we navigate the pandemic but for the foreseeable future. Market disruptions are no longer the exception. Disruption is the norm, and the smartest companies have learned how to not just survive but thrive in environments of constant change.”

Segmenting respondents into categories of Leaders, Challengers and Laggards, a clear picture emerged of what successful companies are doing and that others can replicate, including:

Prioritizing speed when it comes to making decisions and executing faster

Implementing technology that delivers faster business insights from data

Adjusting strategies, funding, and operating plans with short-interval planning cycles

Improving the prioritization process to realign resources to the most important work

Utilizing Lean and Agile business practices throughout the organization

This vital report goes beyond just analyzing why some organizations are more successful than others in quickly adapting to market disruptions. It provides a roadmap for how other companies can achieve success, streamline business processes to prioritize speed and quality, accelerate innovation, and improve strategic outcomes.

“Reducing the gap between strategy and execution becomes even more important as the pace of external disruption increases, and this report provides a clear blueprint about how leading companies are doing exactly that,” said Tickle. “We found that the most successful companies are following a similar recipe for success. They are building speed into their business operations to adjust to constant change. They have shorter, more adaptable planning cycles that enable them to respond to shifts in real-time. They remove internal barriers that stand in the way of adaptability. They resist the lure of the status quo. And they use technology and agile processes to build speed and quality into the way they execute on strategy.”

Based on a global benchmarking analysis of nearly 1,000 business and technology professionals at organizations across a wide range of industries around the world, the survey was commissioned by Planview and conducted by independent research firm Lawless Research.

Results uncovered why many companies struggle to quickly respond to change and disruption:

Complex governance or approval processes (38%)

Unclear or conflicting priorities (33%)

Lack of resources to complete all approved projects (31%)

Lack of organizational alignment (departmental silos) (31%)