What is Execution Excellence?

It’s when organizations have execution capabilities in their DNA, when people become successful at work, when colleagues feel more satisfied and when you waste less time by understanding each other better, at all levels, in daily routines.

Framework: The 5 Pillars of Execution Excellence

2 out of 3 initiatives fail! Beat the odds and succeed with 5 Pillars.

When you’re leading 20+ people across multiple locations with a major change agenda, you need a common way to execute. The 5 Pillars of Execution Excellence provide that guidance. Explore the following key aspects before launching your transformation (click the green ‘+’ to see details).

EXECUTION PROCESS

A clear, uniform process streamlines the way your team executes. More importantly, it builds execution muscle over time — because repetition turns practice into mastery.

When defining your execution process, consider:

Cascading goals: How will you translate high-level objectives into concrete daily actions across levels, teams, and locations?
Accountability: Who reports to whom, on which initiatives, and how often?
Visibility & agility: How will you visualize progress, keep focus on the right priorities, adapt quickly, and capture lessons learned along the way?

The 5 Pillars of Execution Excellence
© Victor Veloso

GOVERNANCE MODEL

Clear roles and responsibilities create both commitment and accountability. Just as important, they define who needs to be informed and included — so everyone has the right information at the right time.

When shaping your governance model, consider:

Roles & ownership: Who owns which actions — large and small?
Consistency: How will you streamline terminology, color codes, methodology, feedback quality, report layouts, follow-up meetings, and key learning points?
Access & compliance: How will you manage view/write permissions on your execution plan and ensure communication aligns with your RACI model

COMPETENCIES

It’s easy to assume people already have strong execution skills. But even top performers who excel individually often struggle to apply the same skills in a team setting.

Assess the needed competencies for effective execution, including:

Goal-setting
Milestone and action planning
Problem articulation and solution design
Running and contributing to efficient team meetings

REAL-TIME TRANSPARENCY

To lead change, you must first make it visible. Some teams only need quarterly updates, while others require daily notifications, overviews, and insights — in other words, real-time transparency.

When defining your needs, consider:

Level of detail: How much transparency do you want — which KPIs, focus areas, and depth?
Reporting rhythm: What heartbeat frequency ensures progress (daily, weekly, monthly)?
Tools: Which platforms will you use to communicate, report, and ensure compliance?
Meetings: Where will progress data be used — weekly team check-ins, monthly management reviews, or one-to-one conversations?

ROADMAP STRUCTURE

In strategy execution — whether transformation programs or day-to-day business — you deal with multiple levels of detail that must be organized. We call this the roadmap structure. ActionPlanner supports this by helping teams connect high-level company objectives to initiatives, milestones, and actions.

When designing your roadmap structure, consider:

Clarity vs. detail: How will you organize activities big and small without drowning in unnecessary detail?
Time horizons: How will you enable planning and execution of both long-term initiatives (months/quarters) and short-term daily actions in the same tool?
Flow of work: How can you support both top-down cascaded goals and bottom-up execution plans?
Business focus: If needed, how will you separate activities for developing the business from those for running the business?

If your team is ready to embark on the ActionPlanner journey, we have thought these (and many other) Execution Excellence aspects into our simple web-application.

“Veloso’s Execution Excellence process”

Making it work, on an everyday basis

A path to Execution Excellence

In order to reach the Execution Excellence level, we must first be able to manage team execution in a streamlined process.

The founder of ActionPlanner, Victor Veloso, developed the “VELOSO Execution Excellence process” when he was a strategy consultant helping companies execute strategy more efficiently by connecting the dots across multiple leadership disciplines into an agile never-ending 4 step circular execution process.