Strategy Execution - Best Practices

What Is Strategy Execution?

By: Ed Barrows
http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/What-Is-Strategy-Execution.aspx

Execute strategy through strategic projects

Identify strategy projects.
The first step in improving project-oriented strategy execution is to capture and organize all strategy projects

Resource strategy projects.
Projects that directly impact the strategy should be resourced.

Manage projects.
Organizations must develop a capability in project management if they are to execute strategy effectively.   The full complement of strategy projects  should be coordinated and controlled by a central strategy project office or officer with the responsibility for monitoring both progress and performance.

Communicate strategy.
It is difficult to execute strategy when the strategy itself isn’t well understood, or performance relative to it is not communicated.  Leaders must communicate their strategy to the workforce in a way that will help them understand not only what needs to be done, but why.

Align individual roles.
Senior leaders have to ensure that roles are modified so that employees at all levels see their contribution to the strategy success and can articulate and evaluate their personal roles toward achievement of specific strategic goals.  This is perhaps one of the most critical aspects of the execution process.

Reward performance.
In strategy execution, as in any other area of management, what gets measured gets done.  Taking this one step further, what get measured and rewarded gets done faster.  After explaining the strategy and aligning the workforce to it, senior managers institute the incentives that flow from the success of strategic endeavors or projects,  that drive behaviors consistent with the strategy.


Research on the strategy-execution gap
http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/cds/the_concept/research-strategy-execution-gap

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution

Gary L. Neilson, Booz & Company, Karla L. Martin, Booz & Company, Elizabeth Powers, Booz & Company

June 2008, HBR

In our work helping more than 250 companies learn to execute more effectively, 

we’ve identified four fundamental building blocks executives can use to influence those actions—

clarifying decision rights, designing information flows, aligning motivators, and making changes to structure. 

(For simplicity’s sake we refer to them as decision rights, information, motivators, and structure.)

Ensuring that people truly understand what they are responsible for and who makes which decisions. Clarify what decisions are already made and what decisions are to be taken by them.

Give them the information they need to fulfill their responsibilities. Whatever information is collected by the strategy team have to be shared with execution persons. They should not be forced to search once again and fail to identify more relevant information.

Then develop motivators.  Try to align personal goals and department goals with strategic goals.

Last assess the structural changes needed. The reporting relationships and job bundles may need to be changed for effective implementation of strategy.

 

The Strategy Execution System

Bob Kaplan

12 May 2015

Harvard Business School Executive Education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGocuYM3nqY

Developing a Strategy for Execution

26 Mar 2019

MITSMR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-apRaC7NrHE

First book by Chandler in 1962

Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Execution

1 Jun 2018

MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Videos

Moderator:

Paul Michelman, Editor in Chief, MIT Sloan Management Review (@pmichelman)

Speakers:

Anthony Christie, SF ‘98, Chief Operating Officer, Trace3 (@christieontech)

Cathy Horst Forsyth, Founder and Managing Partner, Strongbow Consulting Group

Mike Macrie, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Land O’Lakes, Inc. (@mwmacrie)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (#IrvingWB)

In most organizations, strategy and execution are managed almost entirely separately. High-level strategy is set by a small group of executives; the implementation of that strategy is then delegated into the hands of a much larger and more heterogeneous group of functional managers and their far-flung teams. What happens? Those words that looked like a sure-fire recipe for success become mutated by the demands of day-to-day operations and the individual agendas of those who lead them. Digital technologies can exacerbate this problem as much as help address it. Is there a better way to develop strategy? Is there a more effective means of connecting strategic priorities to the realities of execution? The members of this panel say emphatically, “yes.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cal2QpiZEDE

Updated  8.10.2021,  6 August 2017, 30 October 2016