Why Most Business Strategies Fail Long Before Execution Begins.

Most organizations don’t fail because of poor strategy. They fail because leadership teams lack the operational visibility needed to execute consistently, efficiently, and at scale.

As businesses navigate increasing economic pressure, workforce complexity, operational costs, and accelerating market change, the gap between strategy and execution continues to widen.

The RightFoot Operational Execution Model™, powered by OpusAnalytics.ai, was developed to help organizations better understand how workforce capability, operational intelligence, leadership effectiveness, and execution performance connect together — transforming disconnected business data into actionable execution insight.

Because in today’s environment, resilience is no longer driven by instinct alone. It is driven by operational intelligence.

The RightFoot Operational Intelligence Model™ has been designed with the well-known strategy-execution gap in mind – a challenge that continues to frustrate executives and business leaders around the world.

At the core of the approach is the recognition that delivering strategy requires far more than top-down decision-making, which assumes that objectives and initiatives cascade throughout the organization and that people will seamlessly transition to new ways of working.

The Execution Intelligence Model

This “execution intelligence”  model guides organizations toward five key objectives.

At its foundation lies strategy clarity. This is not about producing more detailed plans, but about making sharper choices. Organizations must define where they will grow and, equally importantly, where they will not. This requires identifying priority markets and the capabilities that truly differentiate them within those spaces.

Clarity is about focus. If everything is a priority, nothing really is. Being intentional about the capabilities that will actually drive growth – not just the ones you happen to have today - is key.

This naturally leads to the second dimension: capability visibility. Many organizations operate with only a partial understanding of their talent landscape. Skills are assumed rather than mapped, and gaps remain hidden until they become critical constraints. The Execution Intelligence Model introduces a more rigorous approach – systematically identifying existing capabilities and highlighting where investment or development is required.

What then emerges is a more actionable – and sometimes more uncomfortable – picture of the organization’s true readiness to deliver on its strategy.

The discussion then turns to leadership, which is the third dimension.  This being the “force multiplier,” when properly understood, is a game-changer.  Not all leaders contribute equally to execution. Some elevate performance across teams, while others inadvertently create drag.

It’s not just about who leads, it's about who amplifies. The right leaders create momentum, clarity, and accountability – and that effect cascades through the organization.

Identifying these leadership multipliers is a critical lever within the model. It allows organizations to place the right individuals in roles where they can have a disproportionate impact, strengthening execution without necessarily increasing headcount.

This approach extends into hiring. The "Talent" dimension is therefore the fourth key component of the model.

Traditional recruitment often responds reactively to vacancies or short-term needs. In contrast, the RightFoot model aligns talent acquisition directly with strategic capability gaps. Every hire is intentional, linked to a clearly defined organizational need rather than a generic role description.

The fifth and final dimension of the model is "Execution Intelligence", which is understanding the key data points that influence execution.  The good news is, the baseline data points are predefined. Upload your data, get inputs and recommendations on how to refine the insights, and so on ....

Underpinned by technology

The OpusAnalytics Execution Index is built with the methodology of the RightFoot Execution Intelligence Model and data analysis and logic powered by AI and ML capabilities. The ongoing usage of the "Execution Index" will help businesses utilize the deep analysis and relationships between the data points.  The "continuous learning" process will help decision makers understand patterns and make more informed decisions.

The RightFoot Execution Intelligence Model™ utilizes technology and analytics to continuously evolve the usage of the organizational data, providing the foundation for data-driven decision-making and supporting the various strategic priorities of a business.

Customer Review: MOHR HR Operations

MOHR Cloud-based HR System, a solution published to Microsoft AppSource, provides mobile-based attendance and employee self-service functionality, while supporting managers with a set of dashboards for quick access to team data. The Azure-based solution allows for seamless integration with existing systems to manage personnel records, process payroll, and track employee performance. MOHR is available in Arabic and English and is customized for the legal requirements of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Microsoft AppSource interviewed Amr ElBaag, Managing Director at Al-Rwad High Service, to learn what he had to say about the solution.

What do you like best about MOHR?

The employee self-service (ESS) portal has impacted positively the way we communicate with employees. Employees no longer need to leave their work locations and come to the office headquarters to make a request. All requests and approvals are managed easily through the ESS portal.

With more than 1,800 employees, we were consuming a lot of time, effort, and paperwork managing requests. Now, an employee can access the ESS from a smartphone, and the requests automatically follow an approval path. If the matter relates to salary, it is reflected immediately on the employee's pay slip. More important, nothing is missed. No single request is missed or forgotten or not managed.

How has the service helped your organization?

For more than four years, we were using a system developed on Oracle, and we had a lot of problems integrating attendance machines with this system. We also had a lot of problems integrating it with personnel operations and payroll. As a result, most of the work was done manually. MOHR has ended this mess.

The system now immediately reflects attendance transactions from any attendance machine in any work location. This provides us with better control over work, especially in remote locations.

How is customer service and support for MOHR?

This is one of the advantages of MOHR: a great, dedicated team focused on the customer experience.

During the implementation and configuration phase, we faced some challenges. We were surprised that the Rightfoot implementation team came to our headquarters and stayed until midnight to resolve issues. The top management team at MOHR joined meetings to make sure that the project remained on the road to success.

During day-to-day operations, we have open communication channels with Rightfoot's team through telephone calls, WhatsApp messages, and emails. The support team is always accessible, even at night, and they go beyond the service level agreement's defined work hours and response policies.

Any recommendations to other users considering this product?

I evaluated MOHR in four key areas: system features and usability, technology, support, and price. I am quite satisfied in all areas, and I rate MOHR as a strong, valuable partner for Al-Rwad.

For a successful, smooth implementation, document all your HR processes, procedures, and policies. I am quite sure you will find in MOHR all your needs covered and even more.

What is your overall rating for this product?

5 out of 5 stars.

Microsoft AppSource is empowering users to find line of business applications, such as MOHR Cloud-based HR System across more than 80 categories and in over 40 industries and industry verticals. Explore Microsoft AppSource to find the right applications, approved for integrity and security, and accelerate your digital transformation.

The Key to making your employee journey H U M A N

With so much being written regularly around the impacts imposed on us by COVID and how it has dramatically led businesses to think about remote working and its implications, how it has fast-tracked the introduction of technology to businesses that were not rushing into digitalization.  The one fact that has stood the power of change is the fact that for businesses to be successful, profitable, and continue to deal with the unknown, ‘people’ are the biggest priority.  Talent-related issues rank as top business concerns.

An additional fact that needs to stay on top of the list of every business and its leaders is the ‘human’ side of work.

The trending topics that have been closely monitored over the last year are ….

1. Given that work is remote, how does that impact productivity?

2. Can we continue to get the best out of our teams and how is the state of mind impacting results?

3. Have we equipped our people with the right tools that enable them to do the work they need to do?

4. Have we been inclusive enough of the changing needs of our teams and how the lines of personal and work-related priorities have been blurred?

5. Are we able to learn from this year of forced change … what have we learned?

Aligning people, their teams, and the needs of a business are the core to all of the above.  The starting point for any business is to build the foundation.  Ensuring people have the right avenues to share, ask questions, and interact in a planned way with their teammates.  This requires having regular rhythms of connections, having access to key decision-makers, and having the tools that allow everyone to be kept informed of what others are working on.

Having a one-game plan that hammers down on keeping people involved, informed, and engaged is the one plan that is the ultimate priority.  

Once businesses have established the right practices to keep their team connected, they need to equip their teams with the right tools that help them effectively deliver on their work.  There are a vast array of technology tools to choose from, the key needs to be …

1. Picking the tool that best fits the needs of each audience it is addressing (employees – managers and business decision-makers)

2. Spending enough time to make sure that every one of these audiences understands its value and how it will make her/him more successful.

3. Using data to understand the impact such a change has yielded.

4. Communicating lessons learned back to the team regularly.

So, what role are you playing in making your team feel connected, engaged, and successful?

RightFoot Now Available on Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace

Cairo, Egypt — 01/12/2021 RightFoot today announced the availability of MOHR on Microsoft AppSource, an online cloud marketplace providing tailored line-of-business solutions. MOHR is also available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure.

RightFoot is a boutique consultancy firm focused on digitalization solutions for the Human Capital domain. Our MOHR HR operations solution addresses the needs of the different audiences in any business: employees, managers, and HR teams. MOHR offers employee self-service functionalities, features intelligent dashboards for managers to address their team’s needs, and includes the legislative requirements of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to ensure compliance with local labor laws.

MOHR comes with a pre-built set of workflows to help streamline operational needs as and when they happen. Additionally, MOHR’s fascial recognition functionality helps offset the impact of COVID-19 by offering remote working options for businesses requiring logging time, with no hardware requirements.

Businesses adopting MOHR have seen up to a 2.5x return on their investment in the first year, and customers have extended their operational efficiency in hiring and development by utilizing the extensions that MOHR offers at zero integration cost. Features that position MOHR uniquely to support businesses and end users include an assessment library, an accounting module, payroll processing, and the ability to introduce a variety of workflows depending on business needs.

“The changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will forever change the way we work,” said Somaya El Sherbini, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, RightFoot. “HR processes have been fast-tracked to adapt to these changes. Usage of smart technologies that ensure business continuity are a key priority more than ever before. Availing MOHR HR operations solution on Microsoft AppSource extends our ability to reach to Microsoft’s customers with a cost-effective, subscription-based solution that leverages the power of Azure.”

Toby Bowers, General Manager, Business Applications Group, Microsoft Corp., said, “We’re happy to welcome RightFoot to Microsoft AppSource, which gives our partners great exposure to cloud customers around the globe. Microsoft AppSource offers partner solutions such as MOHR from RightFoot to help customers meet their needs faster.”

RightFoot’s mission is to help businesses maintain, scale, and transform in a predictable manor, while focusing on their core asset – their people.

For more information, press only:

Somaya El Sherbini – Co-Founder and Managing Partner

RightFoot – People Management Solutions

somayael@rightfoot.org

+20127 855 5657

Info@rightfoot.org  

The three drivers of business success

As pressure mounts with economies, pandemics, impact of climate change …. Businesses are required to continuously reinvent themselves through their people, building capabilities like - curiosity, problem solving, dealing with ambiguity, collaboration, and empathy.

Over the last decade, executives of businesses, irrespective of their size and industry, when surveyed, what is top of mind, consistently over the years, has been the relationship between capability building, skill development and business performance.  With that said, the skills that need to be developed and learning that needs to be acquired are a revolving door.

Amid the evolving skill building and on-going learning that businesses need to prioritize now more than ever, is the fact that what is expected of every job, is continuously changing.  We can easily say that new types of jobs are continuously being born.  For some jobs, the skills needed are shifting for other jobs, it’s the capabilities.  As an example, if you are in a finance line of business, skills like collaborating with others to incorporate the inputs, points of view and knowledge of the people around you, the inputs of business customers …. will continue to evolve.  The capabilities that are on the rise, are the ability to analyze facts and data using technology tools to help improve what the data is informing and accordingly improving abilities of making better projections and data-based decisions.  

Future organizations will become smaller and flatter, while asked to deliver more.  To meet this change, working from anywhere, being continuously connected to other people in the organization will continue to increase.  Working virtually will continue to evolve and certainly the use of software will increase.

Pressure from talent will mount, they will need to be continuously learning, and for the high achievers, they will continuously be pushing for individual development.

Is there a solution?

The more business leaders are looking deep at their most important and most valuable asset, their people, the more chances of sustainable success – they will drive real business impact!

Continuous evaluation of internal processes, interactions, job functions and how they are done

Create the environment where people learn from each other, on an ongoing basis.  Every person has a unique skill that they are comfortable and good at; help your team unleash their potential.

Those responsible for managing teams are the key to the success of any business.  They dive deep and deliver work through their team, they are the competent doers who deliver work themselves and they are the safety net, when they work together as a community with their peers, (other mid-level managers); to collaborate, exchange knowledge and work together to up-skill their teams.

Automation: When most or all machines/processes run with little or no human control; to perform work without the aid of people

Digitalization: when a business uses technology to engage with people to precisely address their specific needs

Many companies have existing processes that are automated however it is no longer about automation, it is about digital transformation.

Creating the environment for on-going learning, regularly measuring organization and people performance, equipping your business with the tools that help measure this success and provide insightful data that helps you think more objectively is the #Futureofwork.

The Future of Work is here

With a total of six months behind us now since COVID-19 has hit globally, there is a reference and trends clearly showing; people and businesses in general are becoming more comfortable with the ‘new normal’, i.e. remote working – using automation – engaging with co-workers, as well as with customers and partners virtually.   We are now more versed and more accepting.  With that said, it is still coming with a relative feeling of un-predictability of what is next. 

Business leaders are concerned about their bottom line, business continuity and whether their budgets are realistic.  Being a realist, for some, making a decision to focus on the short term is the priority…. cutting costs across the board, irrespective of whether they will impact the mid to long term, is an approach that some businesses have opted to take.  Even though these decisions might salvage the very short term, this is a strategy that certainly puts the mid and long term at risk.

As a company, we believe that the ‘future of work’ was triggered into full speed ahead by COVID.  We strongly believe that we should look at the glass half full resulting from this situation and think about the repercussions forced on us because of this situation.  Would small businesses be thinking about their ability to capture knowledge given constraints on the size of their workforce? How are they becoming more efficient?  How are they capturing information about their performance, that would help guide their decisions, given that resources are always limited?

For mid-size businesses, did they spend enough time building their brand and attracting ‘A-Players’?  have they invested enough time, effort and resources in building the capabilities of their teams, knowing that if they really want to scale, exponentially growing and being more intentional about their potential, it all starts with having the right size of resources, who continue to learn and grow, as the business grows.

For the big organizations, it is really about the efficiency.  How has data helped in shaping their future focused decisions?  Where has this lead them?

‘A lot of my work has shifted into how to interrogate the present more effectively, and to then be able to better understand how the future might unfold.’

Futurist Consultant

While it is difficult to predict the impact of COVID and what the next 9 to 12 months might look like, there are clear signs that are lessons learned….

1)     Technology is a priority.  Irrespective of size, industry or maturity, it is the future.  For the future of work, it is non-negotiable.

2)     Be conscious of how cost cutting can and will impact your mid to long term.  From a future of work perspective, prioritizing your internal processes, adopting simple tools to continue to build the capacity of your team, ensuring that you are able to identify and prioritize what the ‘skills of the future’ would be for your business

3)     Building and staying true to your employer brand is a key asset.  If your business promotes learning and growth, be sure to make that a priority where your time, effort and investments are channeled.

Technological advancement can have a huge impact on the HR department of an organization. It allows the company to improve its internal processes, core competencies, relevant markets and organizational structure as a whole. ... This will lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness of its Human Capital.

The opportunities that are un-taped in businesses, irrespective of their size, is the ability to leverage the power of idea generation, collaboration and problem solving that exists within your workforce.  Being able to unlock that power by driving a culture of collaboration and teamwork, expanding thinking and different points of view and embracing all types of diversity (gender – age – thinking styles … ), is food for thought.

Buzz words on the minds of business and HR leaders, engagement – motivation – purpose driven, are all low hanging fruits, waiting to be harnessed.  The future of work is certainly aligned with what employees are driven by …. These are truly the drivers.

Our mission is helping businesses maintain, scale, and transform in a predictable manor, while focusing on their core asset – The People.

Announcement: Guidepoint to help RightFoot leverage expert perspectives across MENA

We are pleased to announce that Guidepoint, a leading expert network firm, will act as a trusted source of first-hand research for RightFoot People Management Solutions and Services. With an office located at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Guidepoint’s local team of experienced sourcing experts will assist RightFoot by identifying highly sought-after subject matter experts to advise on their projects.

At RightFoot, we are committed to provide business owners with the clarity and direction they need to reach their goals, which is why we intend to make use of Guidepoint’s best-in-class consultancy services. Somaya El Sherbini, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RightFoot noted, “At RightFoot, we strongly believe in the quote, ‘great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people’. Excited for the opportunity of raising the bar with our ability to execute, to bring ‘great things’ to our clients.”

Bilal Sabouni, Managing Director – Middle East & North Africa at Guidepoint added, “We look forward to continuing to expand our existing client relationships with not only the world’s largest consulting firms, but also with highly capable boutique firms like RightFoot. We are pleased to be supporting RightFoot with its work in the market.”

About RightFoot:
Based in Cairo, Egypt, RightFoot provides HR Technology solutions to its customers, and uses Consultancy Services to support with organizational design and effectiveness, as well as talent management. Engaging in gap analysis, implementations and roll outs. The strategies adopted focus on leveraging technology to be able to improve processes, provide consistency and generate data insights that support business leaders to make informed business and people decisions.

About Guidepoint:
Headquartered in New York with a Middle East hub based in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Guidepoint is a leading knowledge services firm that connects clients with a rapidly expanding contracted network of over 725,000 screened industry & subject-matter experts specialized in 150 sectors and based across +190 countries. Guidepoint's services include direct phone consultations with vetted advisors, expert surveys, subject-specific teleconferences, in-person meetings, topical events, remote project work, and other data products.

Digital HR and the Distribution of Emerging Technologies

With global economies facing challenges for the remainder of 2020, some businesses will look at creating new revenue streams, some will try to reinvent themselves introducing new product lines or different ways to attract and retain their customers, other businesses will look at ways to really understand what their operational state is, how they can work differently, to ensure the biggest return on their investments are achieved.

The key to addressing these different business challenges lies in an organizations’ ability to understand the current mode of operation of its different functions, so that they are able to come up with a well thought through future state, that would stand the test and succeed.

An example, the savvy marketers who will look at the data to understand the performance of each product, the underlying themes influencing growth and market share rely on data and analytics to be
able to make more informed decisions. In the new world of work, what if these business objectives were not only clearly tied to the teams and individuals working in the organization but would shift as and when the data insights support this. What if businesses were able to identify their inability to drive market share growth because their teams needed to build new types of skills? What if they understood that these skills are so scarce in the market and invested sooner, rather than later in re-skilling and up-skilling their people?

The digitization of HR processes and creating the connections between the main business functions is how the world will need to transform. The business of HR has always been about people with relatively
high subjectivity driving decision making. In the new world of work, businesses will need to weave into their business strategies data insights and predictive analytics. HR analytics is a mixture of methodology and software that works on the statistical model in order to deliver work-related data, which enables the company’s decision-makers to optimize and enhance human resource management. This will result in the biggest disruption, and will set company’s up for fast paced success, or will keep them locked in the old ways of execution.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Global technology companies and some of the top eCommerce and retailers of the world have started to look at data insights to help them make better hiring and retention decisions. On the global level, the
adoption has been slow, however leading the world in Asia Pacific where the use of some type of HR Analytics has reached 70%.

It is no surprise that research found that only 2% of HR organizations have a mature people analytics capability. 1 Despite the fact that businesses globally have adopted HR solutions and the size of this
technology market has grown by 29% from 2018-2019. 2 The adoption of technology solutions continues to grow, however the abilities of using such solutions for data insights is still lagging.

New rising HR solution providers are tackling every point in the employee journey to be able to connect and monitor their impact on business performance. Talent Acquisition has had the lion’s share of focus over the years, this will continue to grow and dominate the focus areas, however, there are a lot of close runners up. We strongly believe that by 2025, companies who have not considered and challenged the
value of their investments in this space will be confronted with their inability to keep up with their financial targets.

Q: Thinking ahead to the next 12-24 months, which of the below areas are you
planning to pursue regarding HR Technology? (Response Base: 594 – HR and HR IT Leaders)
Source: PwC HR
Technology Survey 2020

HR Technology focus through 2022
49% Talent Acquisition tools
48% Employee Experience/Portal Layers
46% Skills Mapping/Career Pathing
45% Intelligent Recruiting
45% Intelligent Automation or Process Automation
37% Business Insights
36% Tailor Learning Journeys

Smart HR solutions continuously on the rise will be the disruptors in the coming few years. We categorize the principles of decision making of SaaS HR Systems to be those that …

1) Focus on the user experience (the employee – the manager – the HR professional)
2) Require little, to no customization
3) Are cost effective

Fewer Leaders say that their solutions are showing real value back to the business.

43% Recruiting Solutions - recruiting insights - employer brand
41% Workforce Planning Solutions – workforce analytics
37% Talent Management Solutions – retention – skills
inventory – Career Pathing – compensation & reward
strategies
Employee Experience – engagement - tenure

More and More organizations are realizing that HR is not the only function to benefit from People Analytics. Over 70% of Executives are making strides to integrate data into everyday decision making.
Bersin Research Survey - 2017 1

In summary, business leaders need to think deeply about how they are able to get the biggest return on their investments, they need to think beyond the independent processes of HR and consider the broader sense of how their People Agenda influences their businesses in the broader scale; they need to consider the fact that the digitally embracive culture and mind-set is something that they might not
have, and that they need to be taken into account to ensure adoption and bigger more impactful return.

Employees sit at the center of a business’s universe.
RightFoot

Our Mission: Helping businesses maintain, scale, and transform in a predictable manner, while focusing on their core asset – The People.

- Bersin Research - 2017 1
- PwC Survey – 2020 2