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Can you clearly articulate your strategy?  Can others?  Leaders should be able explain their strategy without use of complex charts, diagrams or detailed summary presentations.  If you can't explain it, how can your people.  Keep your strategy simple and communicate it often to responsible parties.  The tactical objectives required to execute the organization's strategy should be clearly defined and measurable. You want others to understand your strategy so that they can then translate it into specific objectives that can then be acted upon by the people in the organization.    

Is your culture aligned with your strategy?  Despite having a well developed strategy with probabilities of great business success, if your culture doesn't support it, it will never happen.  For example, if the strategy is taking the organization in a new direction and requires a cultural shift, leaders must ensure that their people understand the rationale for the change in direction, believe in the probabilities and understand what is required of them to help the company meet new strategic expectations.  New leaders often underestimate the importance of cultural buy-in and over-rely on the significance of their leadership role to sell their strategy. 

Do you have a clear and well defined process in place to ensure successful execution of your strategy?  In other words, how good is your plan?  Leaders are often admired for their visionary and strategic capabilities but not recognized for the less sexy but perhaps more important skill of performance planning. Strategy is just an idea until you have a well developed plan to implement it.  A solid performance plan includes specific objectives, identified responsible parties, expected timelines, realistic forecasts, and potential obstacles to successful execution.   

How well do you track business performance?  Tracking business performance is a critical area for leaders but can be viewed as boring and likely is delegated to those lower in the organization.  All leaders must track performance and identify factors either contributing or inhibiting expected results.  You do not need to be knee deep in the details but you should be able to accurately connect current business performance with future strategic outcomes.     

Do you and your team have the right level of discipline and diligence to guarantee on-going implementation of strategic initiatives?  Leaders need to ensure they have the right people on their team to oversee project management and performance planning.  Those who can both implement and maintain key processes and display the right level of discipline, insight, and diligence to ensure the plan is working are key contributors to your successful execution.   

Once initiatives are completed and expectations are met, how well do you reward and recognize your people?  Efforts should be made to ensure that successful implementation occurs and those responsible/accountable to these efforts are recognized and rewarded.  This is the time to take care of your people because without them, you would not be successful.