Strategy Implementation You have spent the last several weeks developing your strategy and declaring a game-winning move for the company you selected | WriteDen

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 1 of 13

JWI 540: Strategy

Week Nine Lecture Notes

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 2 of 13

EXECUTING THE PLAN

What It Means

We’ve learned why developing a clear strategy for your organization is vital for its success. However, that

is only the beginning. For your strategy to be successful, your entire organization needs to understand it

to bring it to life. As a strategy leader, you must be able to communicate your strategic plan in a way that

gets people excited and generates buy-in. You must also understand and manage the forces that may

resist the change. Finally, you will need to secure and allocate the resources – both human and capital –

to successfully implement your plan.

Why It Matters

• Execution is essential to winning. Without an effective delivery, everything you have done up to this stage is nothing more than an academic exercise.

• Winning takes everything you’ve got. It takes your best ideas, your best people, and the drive to get work done. Do not drop the ball when it comes to putting the execution of the strategy in the hands of your best people and giving them the resources they need to get the job done.

• A failed execution is demoralizing. It undermines the effort that the team has put into the project and can leave the organization in a worse place than it was before the new strategy was developed.

“In real life, strategy is actually very

straightforward. You pick a general

direction and implement like hell.”

Jack Welch

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 3 of 13

YOUR STARTING POINT

1. How will communication be handled to inform stakeholders about the strategy, get their buy-in,

and ensure their questions are addressed? Have you created an atmosphere to make this

process energizing for the team?

2. What metrics will be used to monitor how effectively each part of the organization embraces

and executes the new strategy? How can you collect the data needed to ensure you are

making progress?

3. What barriers might stop you from fully implementing the strategy?

4. What will likely happen to your company if you don’t execute this strategy?

5. Are you willing to pull top talent from their daily work to implement the strategy?

6. If a merger, partnership or acquisition is being considered, is there a sufficiently robust process

in place for evaluating every aspect of their business, such as pending lawsuits, environmental

considerations, regulatory controls, quality of operating systems, real estate, and corporate

culture?

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 4 of 13

HOW DO WE GET READY FOR IMPLEMENTATION?

You have assessed your company’s strategic capabilities, identified your target customers, sized up the

competition, considered your strategic options, and finally settled on a strategy. It is time to implement,

right? We do not want to squelch anyone’s enthusiasm, but you are more likely to succeed if you have a

plan that sets out activities, priorities, and processes for implementing your strategy.

YOU NEED A PLAN

Strategy initiatives often begin at a highly abstract level. There is usually a lot of work to be done to bring

those lofty goals back down to earth. Many companies find it helpful to flesh out their strategic objectives

by asking questions. What does success look like? How does it feel? What are we doing or not doing to

achieve our objectives? What are our competitors doing? How will the future look if we make, or do not

make, this change?

To put some meat on the bones of its strategic goal of expanding into the United States, IKEA might have

depicted what success would look like by creating maps with pins indicating the locations of initial stores.

Would they be in the suburbs of big cities on the east and west coasts? College towns like Ann Arbor or

Palo Alto? Once the locations were identified, the company’s strategy planners could have sketched out

the necessary activities – for example, the creation of supplier networks, marketing campaigns, and

staffing models – needed to turn those pins into actual, profitable stores.

As you put together your implementation plan, there will likely be some conflict among different courses of

action. For example, you may discover that retraining existing staff or hiring new people is a bottleneck

that will delay all the other activities. Meanwhile, while you are concerned about hiring, one of your

colleagues is extremely eager to make an acquisition, and another has convened focus groups to provide

input for branding strategies. How do you coordinate these various activities?

ALIGNING THE ELEMENTS OF A PLAN

It may seem like you have an infinite number of approaches to the many strategic activities ahead.

Fortunately, you can group these into a manageable set of categories. You should consider at least five

key elements in order to successfully move from the strategy at a conceptual level toward a strategy in

action.

1. The first of these is the strategy itself. Communicating the strategic objectives, your competitive

advantage, and the timing of implementation throughout the organization in a clear and

meaningful way is absolutely necessary for people to embrace and internalize the strategy.

Instead of talking about your strategy, you might try referring to your agenda to emphasize that

the strategy will shape how management spends its time.

2. You need to ensure that people are ready to implement the strategy. Hiring, staffing, training, and

coaching must be reoriented to focus on the strategy and the activities supporting the company’s

advantage. You may have the right people, but they may need to be reassigned, which may

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 5 of 13

require putting their current projects on hold or eliminating them altogether. You also may not

have the number or type of people you need. If that is the case, not much can get underway until

the necessary people are brought on board.

3. The organizational structure of your business may also need to be modified. For example, the

structure of a law firm shifting from a local strategy to a national strategy might change so that the

firm’s profit centers would be organized around individual offices, rather than firm-wide practice

areas focused on different areas of the law. The organization of offices, regions, and practice

groups, along with internal reporting relationships, would have to shift to better support the

strategy.

4. Much of what needs to be mapped out during strategy planning, and carried out during

implementation, are processes. A geographically expanding law firm, for example, might need to

rethink its process for hiring new associates in order to reflect the firm’s national reach. It may

also want to change its IT processes to monitor potential client conflicts across all geographies.

5. Metrics, such as quality-control measures or customer feedback data, are needed to track

activities tied to the strategic objectives and determine where adjustments are needed. When

they are linked to a meaningful rewards system, metrics can also help coordinate and motivate

the actions of diverse groups working on different aspects of the strategy.

SETTING PLAN PRIORITIES Now that you’ve made decisions related to these five factors, it is time to get busy, right? Wrong. Many

organizations go astray at this point. They are busy working on the implementation of their strategy, but

busy is not necessarily productive. There is one last step you need to take.

You need to prioritize. If you’ve been successful in communicating your strategy and generating

enthusiasm and support throughout the organization, you will have plenty of people eager to move

forward. But remember, it is not realistic to think that everything will be done in the first week. You can set

the top priorities for strategy implementation in various ways. One of the most effective methods is to

frame the situation in the negative. Ask yourself, “What specific aspects of our organization have the

potential to derail this strategic initiative?” Now is the time to consider whether you will have difficulty

hiring people with the right skills fast enough or identifying an acquisition target that meets your agreed-

upon criteria, for instance.

At first, your list of barriers to success may seem discouraging. But systematically group and analyze

them until you have a manageable list of necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for success. From

this list, generate five top priorities that must happen for your strategy to succeed. These priorities

deserve significant managerial attention. Clear priorities offer several benefits. They help align the

organization, making it clear what needs to happen first and where scarce resources should be allocated.

They can also make difficult decisions easier to accept, such as shutting down a project, closing a plant,

or laying off people, because they provide a rationale for controversial moves.

Remember, a task is not a priority if it cannot be accomplished. Make sure you have identified achievable

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 6 of 13

tasks. Then, make sure you do them. If you are having difficulty tackling the top five priorities on your list

because of limited resources or time constraints, do not bother with the other items on the list. People will

often go after low-hanging fruit and keep busy with strategic activities. Do not fool yourself that being busy

working means you are strategically doing the right work. If it is clear you are not up to the task of

achieving your top priorities, go back and revise your strategy and your expectations before taking action

again.

COMMUNICATING THE PLAN

To carry out the plan, managers throughout the organization will do the heavy lifting of translating the

important activities into specific actions that they and their teams will execute. Therefore, it is crucial that

all employees have a clear understanding of what you are collectively trying to achieve. Your

communication of strategy objectives needs to:

✓ Be Received: Cutting through the noise of the work environment is difficult. To be noticed, deliver

your message through multiple channels, including in-person, print, digital, and social media. The

message should be somewhat provocative or surprising. When employees pause with thoughts

like “That’s crazy!” or “That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” you’ve achieved part of your goal.

✓ Be Understood: Once you have people’s attention, buzzwords and jargon will only confuse and

annoy them. Even clear language can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Sometimes, a picture

is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, you need to tell a story. Remember, any lack of clarity

you have around your core message will come through to your audience. And remember, there is

value in repeating and reinforcing the message. It is far better to potentially over-communicate a

strategy than to have it miss even a fraction of its intended audience.

✓ Be Credible: Even if your employees are rapt and understand your message clearly, they need

to believe in it. If there is a credibility gap of any kind, it is unlikely people will make any real

commitments. And if the strategy is a departure from the past, some people may doubt whether

the firm’s leaders are serious about implementing it. Others may wonder whether the funds and

skills are available to pursue the strategy.

✓ Be Actionable: A step-by-step process for moving from concepts to activities to results,

identifying appropriate resources, metrics, and timelines, conveys how the strategy will actually

get implemented. If each employee can see how they can tangibly contribute to the strategy

through their personal efforts and without taking unsupported risks, your communication is

making a real contribution to the firm’s success.

✓ Be Timely: Some news grows obsolete quickly. Other messages are timeless. By the time you

craft your internal communications plan and perfect every word, the message may have grown

stale. Recognize that tradeoffs will have to be made between thorough preparation and timely

communication. When it seems appropriate, use word of mouth to spread messages virally.

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 7 of 13

With a clearly communicated translation of your strategy into a prioritized list of activities, you are well on

your way to putting your strategy into action.

HOW DO WE ALLOCATE RESOURCES?

You have created a prioritized list of activities designed to further your strategic objectives, but as you go

through it, you realize something’s missing. Money needs to be directed to projects. People need to be

assigned to teams. Plant capacity needs to be committed to product lines. Prime office space needs to be

dedicated to departments. These decisions will also mean that some projects, teams, product lines, and

departments will receive fewer resources.

The activities you have identified as important to your strategy must be translated into budget items,

whether for a specific project or as part of the annual budget of a division or department. And because

resources are limited, they must be allocated among various activities. Not everyone will get as much as

they think they need.

Even if your company’s existing resources are well matched with your plan, the details and sequence of

their allocation will be challenging to work out. If the strategy is ambitious and requires adding people,

doing an acquisition, or opening new plants, then the process becomes more complex and anxiety-

producing.

TOP DOWN, BOTTOM UP

The allocation of resources is an iterative, two-way process. In other words, through conversations,

forecasts, and negotiations, teams become more precise in where and how resources should be used. An

early strategic budget may look very little like the eventual budget that is implemented after a few weeks

of planning activity. As noted in the previous lecture notes, the company’s leadership must vividly

communicate the specific aims of the strategy – the types of activities needed for it to succeed – to the

entire organization.

Managers in the individual business units take these overarching directives, translate them into proposed

projects and activities, and then seek the resources to make them a reality. Actions must clearly link to

the strategy in a meaningful way. Although it’s tempting to try to cram a pet project into a strategic plan,

it’s difficult to defend a new plant in Dallas as supportive of a U.S. company’s global expansion. Senior

managers will, in turn, consider the funding requests for these projects and activities, accepting some and

rejecting others. There may be several rounds of back-and-forth.

For example, senior management at a European insurance company communicated its strategy

throughout the organization, along with a portfolio of opportunities that might further the strategy. The key

message from the senior leaders was that they wanted to see more proposals for projects farther from the

core business. These more innovative – albeit more uncertain and unfamiliar – projects were expected to

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 8 of 13

collectively result in higher returns, outweighing the higher associated risk. At first, the business unit

heads continued to propose safe projects that represented incremental changes away from the core

business. Such a response isn’t unusual. Often, a combination of existing financial incentives and self-

preservation instincts leads managers to propose low-risk projects with reachable targets, despite senior

management’s request for more ambitious ideas. The senior leaders rejected these projects and called

for more creative and far-reaching proposals, which they ultimately started getting. But the desired results

did not come from static planning documents that publicized strategic priorities. Managers brought the

message to life and communicated their priorities both in words and in deeds.

Indeed, communication played a big role. Senior managers told admiring stories of crazy, off-the-wall

proposals they had received. Actions reinforced these messages. For example, leaders earmarked

funding for some of the riskier proposals and assigned high-profile people to work on these noncore

efforts. They were stingy in committing funds to ongoing business-as-usual projects.

HOW TO GET BETTER PROPOSALS FROM MANAGERS Inevitably, ideas must also flow in the opposite direction – from top down to bottom up. Many companies

use a formal proposal process to communicate needs back up to senior leaders. At this stage, managers

must get the attention of upper management in order to successfully compete for limited resources.

Leaders want to see documentation, arguments, and plans that are clear, quantifiable, and logical. Such

details not only help you gain the necessary resources, but also create strategies that are more easily

aligned with other company activities.

Proposal templates sometimes help to clarify the information needed and spur movement toward the

firm’s goals. Templates also have a potential downside, though. They can transform the planning process

into a fill-in-the-blanks exercise that fosters conventional thinking. In the best case, managers and

employees develop templates at the business unit level, rather than having them imposed from on high or

– worse yet – from outside advisors or consultants.

Timelines and a bit of well-placed pressure can also move the process along. When bottlenecks develop,

senior managers must be ready to step in to get the planning process back on track. In the case of the

European insurer, each business unit was asked to propose specific projects under the strategic plan and

support the proposal with a business case and a budget. One business unit was slow in pulling its

information together, and the overall resource allocation process ground to a halt. Midlevel managers and

administrators sent a number of messages – both pleading and threatening – to the head of the errant

unit. It may be that the head of the business unit thought the deadline was not real and was waiting to

hear when his data were really needed. Perhaps he did not think his proposal would be an integral part of

the overall planning and budgeting process. In the end, it took an unexpected visit from a senior leader

and a one-on-one discussion to break the logjam.

PLAYING THE BUDGET GAME

Allocating resources is a bit like a game with many moving pieces. In that spirit, consider a hypothetical

situation in which you take four friends to lunch and have just $200 to spend. Would you:

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 9 of 13

1. Ask everyone what they would like to order, and if the cost of their selections totals less than

$200, order and enjoy your meal?

2. Ask everyone what they would like to order, and if the cost of their selections totals more than

$200, reveal your limit and ask the group to make different choices?

3. Talk to the restaurant ahead of time so that it only offers your group meals in your price range?

4. Tell your guests in advance that they each have $40 to spend on the meal, including tip?

5. Ask everyone to share the portion of the bill over $200?

This example may sound silly, but in reality, it illustrates the many ways in which group decisions about

resource allocation can play out. What you communicate, when, and to whom, has an impact on the

choices made. Some people even try to game the system. We’ve all been to dinner with someone who

orders the lobster when you’ve already agreed to split the bill equally.

In some companies, a project may benefit one area and be paid for by another. Some projects wouldn’t

be proposed if the business unit heads knew the financial constraints of the firm. Because strategically

important tasks may stall or collapse due to lack of funding, senior management needs to have a clear

idea of its objectives as everyone heads into the budget process.

• Are you trying to please everyone equally?

• Do you favor some businesses over others?

• Can you get the most general strategic bang for your buck or for the project with the highest

potential?

There are no right answers here, but awareness of how you structure the budget process will help you

generate the kind of strategic proposals you want and need to win.

HOW DO WE PUT OUR PLANS INTO ACTION?

Having developed your strategic objectives, identified your critical priorities, and mustered the requisite

resources, you’re ready to launch your strategy. Of course, a company doesn’t simply take off with a

strategy and then put it on autopilot. Even the best strategy needs active oversight and may require

regular updating. Strategy management is another one of those nonlinear, iterative processes, just like

strategy development. Still, your main aim will be constant – the achievement of your critical strategic

objectives and the removal of obstacles that stand in their way.

If you are a manager overseeing an activity to support the strategy – say, new customer satisfaction

initiatives – you may feel frustrated. Resources may have been formally allocated to your project, but

somehow, you are perpetually shorthanded. Your project is supposedly a high priority, but you can’t get

your phone calls to the marketing team answered. You’re having difficulty protecting your budget and

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 10 of 13

decision-making ability. All of your management and communications skills will be put to the test.

Your biggest challenge is likely to be mobilizing employees in support of the strategic priorities. You may

need to get the right people into strategically important roles, or help people adjust to the inevitable

changes and disruptions while staying motivated.

There will be resistance. In fact, as will be discussed in greater detail later in your studies, even when

people appear to be on board with a new strategy, they can be obstacles to change. Work routines are

hard to give up. Unlearning established ways of doing business is usually uncomfortable. There will also

be people who preferred an alternate strategy or, for other reasons, don’t want to see the new strategy

succeed.

Early on, you need to win these people over, or else ask them to leave the organization. You may also

use some of the financial and non-financial techniques to reward and motivate people discussed in your

People Management course. Incentives do not need to be expensive to be effective. Symbolic rewards,

like an award for hitting delivery targets, can be a significant motivator. But managers are kidding

themselves if they think money doesn’t matter. Think about the equity and sustainability of rewards, as

well. If it looks like some people are getting more than others for no good reason, high performers may

feel underappreciated and decide to leave. If people get accustomed to extra perks, they will feel less

well-off when those special rewards disappear.

A MODEL FOR MOBILIZING

As you determine where to fight your battles and how to spend your energy, you’ll need a plan to

galvanize support. You should understand the three vital components of any program that aspires to get

results. Remember the acronym DVP: dissatisfaction, vision, process. When refocusing organizational

efforts, these three factors must all be in place before behaviors will change.

Dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs creates a burning platform from which your people will be

eager to escape. Without some reason to move away from the status quo, it’s difficult for any strategy to

gain traction. Dissatisfaction alone isn’t enough, however. Anywhere might be better than where you are,

but a destination is needed before people actually start to change behaviors and shift mindsets.

A vision of a positive future must be clear to each and every employee. Whether the galvanizing vision is

to change the world, to beat a competitor, or to delight the customer, doesn’t matter as much as whether

it is clear, compelling, and memorable. Sometimes, the vision can be more modest, but expressed just as

compellingly using a simple analytic tool called Gap Analysis. It articulates the differences between the

current state and the ideal future state along one or more dimensions. Whether the gaps involve product

quality or brand awareness, they can create a stark vision of where the organization needs to go, as well

as suggest specific improvements needed to get there.

Once people are ready to change and excited about the future, one more major obstacle remains: how do

we get from here to there? A process with actionable steps is the third necessary component of a

winning strategy implementation.

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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 11 of 13

Good managers understand the interrelat

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