The ‘1/3–2/3 rule’ of execution

Most leaders I meet are strongly committed to doing their very best as change managers, but often they never get the time or opportunity to do things right.

There is a joke being told in many organisations about the board and executive team spending 6 months developing a new strategy. Then the senior managers get 6 days to understand what goes on, whereafter the rest of the leaders have 6 hours to get up to speed. And finally, normal employees can watch a 6-minute strategy movie on SharePoint.

It is funny in a tragic way because it is often true to some degree – many companies expect their leaders and employees to start executing with minimal time to understand and prepare.

Military inspiration

In the British military and many other armed forces, there is a rule of thumb called the ‘1/3–2/3 rule’.

When a commander learns that an operation must occur at a given time, they must spend no more than one-third of the available time to conduct their own planning and issue orders. The remaining two-thirds of the time should be made available to subordinates to prepare, plan at their level, rehearse and position their troops for execution. The idea is that if the leader spends too much time planning, there will not be sufficient time left for those responsible for executing the plan to prepare properly.

An example could be protecting an airport from an enemy takeover attempt (perhaps in the Arctic?). Let’s say that a commander learns that the enemy strike force will arrive in helicopters in 30 minutes – the commander can only spend 10 minutes considering the options, making decisions and brief her or his troops.The remaining 20 minutes must be spent by the troops to discuss the plan, ensure alignment, prepare and rehearse the most critical moves.

Time to align

Corporate life is hopefully very different from waging war, but many companies could benefit from the ‘1/3–2/3 rule’. A key point is to allow time to create real alignment and shared understanding before execution starts.

Often, corporate strategy implementation is founded on a range of optimistic assumptions:

• The strategy is clear and consistent.
• The strategy will be understood by the organisation exactly as it was intended by executive management (who we assume all share the same understanding of the strategy).
• It will be easy for each function and department to understand what they must do differently to support the rollout.
• The strategy and plans are right from the start without the need for adjustments based on input from the organisation.
• The organisation is highly motivated and ready to put all resources behind the implementation.

If just one of these assumptions is false, the implementation is at serious risk of a bumpy and inefficient start.

Let’s talk (or play) about it

As in many other aspects of life, trustful and candid conversations often help. We need to replace traditional one-way strategy communication with real dialogues that can enable strong execution and accountability by supporting shared alignment and local autonomy.

When executive management has presented the strategy, we should allow time for the next level in the organisation to ‘brief-back’ – simply ask your colleagues to share, in their own words, how they understand the strategy and what they plan to do in their role and function to contribute to a successful execution.

Just listening to how other colleagues understand the situation and priorities can do wonders to clarify misunderstandings, create alignment and support a shared sense of ownership. And if possible, consider making a simulated test-run of the strategy implementation, allowing the organisation to get a deeper understanding of how to bring the strategy to life and how to respond to potential setbacks and challenges.

This can be done as tailormade strategy- or wargames, but even a simple ‘sandbox exercise’, where potential risks and competitor reactions can be drafted, can be very helpful. Gamification is a great way to design and facilitate meaningful conversations on what really matters.