Every so often in the course of human events, there are situations so entangled that while tragic endings are not inevitable, they almost appear so. After years and sometimes decades of mismanagement, the summation of these mistakes create a problem so big that even the best minds across the world cannot for all practical purposes resolve. Choices requiring trade-offs become so economically and emotionally distraught that the mere suggestion of them result in conflicts.

Of course, being today is the Greek’s referendum, I am referring to its debt crisis. Already lost decades of economic progress, the citizens of Greece will be voting Yes or No. (At the time of writing, the vote is over but still waiting on the results.) Pundits and analysts have tirelessly presented the various possibilities of either outcome. Sadly, the most common agreement among them is the outcome will be tragic. There are disagreement on the degree of tragedy but a tragedy nonetheless. I am neither a politician nor an economist, so I will not pontificate further. My heart goes out to the people of Greece, and I wish them and the Europeans all the best. But as a business management professional, I am drawing parallels to the failure of strategic business execution.

The common experience, backed by recent studies such as Economist and Harvard Business Review, is that strategy implementation fails at a high rate. Whether that rate is 90%, 75%, or 60%, it is usually in the majority. If the global economy is $80 trillion USD, and large, strategic initiatives of all sizes and scale represent just 1%, it is $800 billion endeavor. Further assume a failure rate of a mere 30%, half of the lowest failure rate in common studies, the problem of strategic business execution is worth at least $240 billion. Coincidentally, this is about the size of the Greece’s GDP. I am fairly sure that actual cost of strategy failure is significantly higher.

What can business executives learn from the mistakes in Greece? Here are my top five lessons:

1. Focus on People. Remember, entities such as organizations, states, and nations are somewhat abstract concepts. The reality is grounded in people. When the troika (IMF, ECB and EC, collectively the lenders) forced severe austerity measures after the first bailout in 2010, the entire economy of Greece suffered immeasurably. Popular support was somewhat weak to start with, and it dissipated fast. (I am surprised that IMF did not learn the previous lesson from the Asian Financial Crisis.) This gave rise to the current ruling party and its coalition in Greece and other left leaning parties with anti-EU platforms throughout the continent. This is a real lesson for business executives. When undertaking major change programs, think about the people first. Who are the supporters and distractors? What’s in it for them? Are the changes mere inconveniences or do they cause real pain? Are there emotionally charge issues?
2. Build Trust. Big projects, like big problems, are difficult to do. This much is obvious, and it is also obvious that distrust will hinder negotiations and collaboration. Yet, organizations often concentrating on short term gains or bending too easily to political winds that create an atmosphere of suspicion and wariness that often degenerates into cynicism. What started as genuine disagreements on processes and tasks now become interpersonal conflicts – a perfect vicious cycle starts. When the current Greece government suddenly called a referendum, all parties, including the people of Greece, were surprised. In strategic implementation, there are many similar tactics such as bringing in a new voice (e.g. customer or executive), reviving an already agreed issue, or surprising the project team with new requests. They may achieve short-term gains, but in the long run, it creates an atmosphere of distrust. At best, progress will be made with the recognition to the larger goal. At worse, the viciousness of these tactics will end in a Greek styled tragedy.
3. Be Real. When undergoing painful changes, leaders often twist the reality to fit their strategy. The metrics are skewed toward a political and often wishful agenda and like a house of cards, the underlying assumptions are weak. If organizational owners were to hold business cases owners accountable for the often rosy projections, how many of them would be running organizations? I suspect very few. Yet, these organizational owners, and in the case of Greece – its citizens – were to decide between real but unsavory choices versus more acceptable options based on questionable rosy projections, how many would take the hard road? Statistics lie and results can often be bent to the wishes its masters, but reality does not. When problems upon problems are layered together, at some point, the entire house of cards will fall. From a business problems, this includes supplying the right level of resources (e.g. people, and people) corresponding to the size of the initiatives. “Right sizing” or “working smarter” has its limits. After all, if people wants orange juice, they will need oranges. In the long run, one cannot spend more than they have. The law of physic matters.
4. Prioritize and Be Selective. People, in general, are wonderfully optimistic. This is a contributory problem to #3 above, but it also reveal itself in the amount of projects people and their organizations are willing to undertake. As a management consultant, I worked with many Fortune 500 and Global 500 firms as well as smaller and growing firms. It never fail to amaze me when executives often fail to realize how many simultaneous initiatives their team are working on often with underwhelming results. Yet, they continue to plow through even though their people are burning out, their customers are complaining, and they themselves are rarely disconnected from their offices. The core issues that all organizations and its people have limits. Even rich and well-endowed nations, like Greece, can only tackle so many problems in tandem. But the political will to focus on few require courage, discipline, and tenacity. Glumly, the will is often sorely missing when it is needed the most.
5. Execute with Discipline. The best planning in the world rarely stays intact for long. Implementation is fraught with challenges, often unforeseen or greatly underestimated at the onset. This is where the ability to execute becomes paramount. After all, all the proceeding lessons are about establishing the optimal context for execution where people’s concern are genuinely acknowledged and managed, trust is high, plans are grounded in reality, and the focus is on a few priorities. But without proper execution, achieving tangible results are still elusive. For organizations, there are many methodologies and best practices to consider. There are ISO standards, audit rules from Basel and GATT, project management methods like Prince 2 and Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), service management framework such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and so on. Regardless of these methods, the most important component for organizations include governance (both strategic and tactic to make the decision), prioritization and selection (to prioritize against competing initiatives and select a few), execution planning (to make sure the plans are thorough and reasonable), requirements definition (to define what needs to be done), monitoring and controlling (to make sure implementation adheres to plan and expectation), transition (to make sure there are sufficient ongoing support), and close (to properly terminate initiatives so resources can work on the next set of priorities). In the case of Greece, there appears to be chaos, with the recent governments overplaying their hands and little monitoring of the economic reality. (What is most depressing for me is that the Greece economy was finally growing again, but the recent breakdown in debt negotiation will cost Greece people dearly).

Naturally, company initiatives are usually not as complex or detrimental as the debt crisis in Greece. But business professionals should examine the situation in Greece carefully. There are many valuable lessons for all of us.