Strategic Implementation

10 Key excerpts on "Strategic Implementation"

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  Enterprise-Wide Strategic Management

  Achieving Sustainable Success through Leadership, Strategies, and Value Creation

  • David L. Rainey(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  It also includes ongoing or periodic strategic analysis, strategy implementation, and strategic evaluation. 1 The Strategic Implementation process involves the outer loop of the overall strategic management process as portrayed in Figure 6.1. It links the front end inner loop of strategic formulation with the operating levels of the organiza- tion that are usually responsible for execution. When taking place during Strategic Implementation, strategic analysis involves the ongoing or reaffirmation of the assessment of the business environment, market spaces, and internal aspects to determine whether sig- nificant changes have occurred or are expected to occur. As time marches forward the analysis conducted during strategic formulation may become outdated. Systematic reflection is required to ensure that if significant changes have occurred, they are considered by the strategic leaders and are incorpo- rated in subsequent decision making. Strategic leaders can then modify the business strategies or adapt the implementation processes to reflect the new realities. Strategic Implementation is interrelated with strategy formulation and an essential part of enterprise-wide strategic management (ESM). It focuses on high-level management constructs to do the following: (1) reinvent, mod- ify, and/or adapt the management systems; (2) restructure or improve the organization; and (3) provide the means to upgrade and refine the support mechanisms that are necessary to achieve results. 429 Strategic Implementation and execution Strategic Implementation includes promulgating policies, establishing pro- cedures, determining best practices, setting performance standards, and form- ing management controls. It also involves establishing the mechanisms for guiding operations management and the lower levels of the organization in the execution of the business strategies and action plans.

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  Strategy Implementation

  • Kurt Verweire(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 Implementing a Winning Strategy Through Strategic Alignment DOI: 10.4324/9781315849447-4

  Strategy implementation is a stepchild in strategic management. Despite the significance of the topic, relatively little research attention has been given to it. However, Hamish Scott, a strategy professor from Ashridge Business School, rightly remarked that, ‘it is essential to remember that an organization moves forward only when something is done — until that point everything is just words’.1

  In this chapter, I will provide you with a new Strategy Implementation Framework and present some new ideas on effective strategy execution. Effective strategy execution is about aligning your organization’s activities around a common core theme, but it is also about creating the right organizational context, so that employees and managers are committed to making the strategy work. So, in essence, strategy implementation is about creating alignment and commitment. In this chapter, I will explain the concept of strategic alignment in detail. Before that, let’s take a closer look at what strategy implementation is.

  What is strategy implementation?

  Intuitively, strategy implementation is a simple concept: it is about taking action in support of a strategy. It’s about translating the strategic choices into concrete actions to realize the organization’s strategic objectives. Academics define implementation as a process of several steps that involves committing resources, setting up organizational structures and control systems, and managing people to transform strategy into a concrete reality.2 However, that definition does not provide us with very concrete insights into how to tackle the strategy implementation challenge.

  In order to define what constitutes effective strategy implementation, I have looked at strategy implementation from a process perspective. An organization can be seen as interconnected sets of processes — and processes are a collection of tasks and activities that together transform inputs into outputs. Within organizations, inputs and outputs can be materials, information and people.3 I have identified five major sets of processes that managers must master to make strategy work. These are the five substantive levers you must pull to make strategy happen, and they constitute our Strategy Implementation Framework (see Figure 3.1

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  Strategic Management in the Third Sector

  • Roger Courtney(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  251 13 Strategic Implementation: making it happen Implementation processes There are also a range of other implementation processes, highlighted below, that need to be addressed if a strategic plan is going to be effectively implemented. As Bryson (1995: 166) states: creating a strategic plan is not enough. Developing effective programs, projects, action plans, budgets, and implementation processes will bring life to the strategies and create real value for the organization (or community) and its stakeholders. Stone et al . (1999) point out, however, that there has been little actual research directly on implementation of strategic activities in the Third Sector context. 1. Develop annual operational plan 9. Praise and celebrate achievement 10. Capture the learning 2. Identify resource requirements from plan 3. Agree the budget 4. Revise plan if necessary 5. Agree lead responsibility for each objective 6. Agree targets with each staff member at appraisal 7. Review staff learning needs and agree learning plans 8. Review progress with each staff member Performance management cycle (annual) Fig 13.1 Performance management cycle Implementation 252 Bryson (1995) also points out the danger of implementation processes being too rigid and, thus, preventing adaptive learning from taking place (see the discussion on the learning organization in Chapter 4 above) when circumstances change or new knowledge becomes available, internally or externally. As Mintzberg (1994) points out realized strategies are (and should be) a mixture of what is intended and what emerges in practice. Figure 13.1 shows a typical performance management cycle to support the implementation of organizational strategy. Resource implications As highlighted in Chapter 2, one of the key criteria for a plan or decision to be con-sidered as strategic is that it requires the commitment of significant resources.

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  Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan

  A Workbook for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

  • John M. Bryson, Sharon Roe Anderson, Farnum K. Alston(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Jossey-Bass

    (Publisher)

  Part 2 Getting Organized Step 2: Learning implementation Step 3: Understanding how and why the strategic plan came to be Step 4: Clarifying who the implementation stakeholders are 2 Getting Organized 55 Leading Implementation Purpose of Step Implementation efforts will succeed only when enough people are inspired, mobi-lized, and guided—that is, led—to make it happen. The purpose of this step is to assist your organization or group to create the leadership group and coalition needed to support, protect, and guide implementation efforts. There is no sub-stitute for effective leadership (and committed followership) when it comes to integrating strategic planning with ongoing implementation—that is, engaging in strategic management —across an organization to enhance meeting mandates, ful-filling the mission, and in general creating significant and lasting public value. Strategic management provides a set of useful concepts, practices, procedures, and tools designed to help executives, managers, and others with the ongoing work of implementing desirable strategies and strategic plans. In the process, shared ownership of the mission, vision, values, and goals is built and responsibility for performance is often both shared collectively and delegated appropriately. But whether strategic management helps or hurts depends on how formal and infor-mal leaders and followers at all organizational levels use it—or misuse it. This workbook is designed to help those who are committed to effective strategic man-agement make it an organizational reality. Following Crosby and Bryson (2005), we define leadership as “the inspiration and mobilization of others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good” (p. xix). This definition suggests that leadership and leaders are not the same thing.

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  Public Sector Management

  Mission Impossible?

  • Ian Chaston(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY 253 Strategic action SWOT Key issues Aims Strategy Exploit or resolve Appropriate actions Achieve Fulfil Implementation assessment Figure 13.1 Implementation assessment model a plan that has been formulated by somebody else. Implementation involves translating strategic goals into performance objectives, ensuring these objectives are relevant, understanding the plan exists across the entire organization, the allocation of resources, and motivating employees. In commenting on the strate-gic implementation process, Hacker et al. (2001) posit that successful Strategic Implementation will often require fundamental changes within the organization. In their view inadequate management of change is often the reason why so many implementations fail. These authors suggest that implementation problems can be reduced if more organizations inserted a ‘deployment phase’ in between the two phases of planning and implementation. The concept of a deployment phase within strategic management is relatively new in the academic literature. It first appeared as a distinct component of strate-gic management of the total quality movement in the 1980s. Managers found a deployment phase assisted in creating more effective links between strate-gic objectives with staff’s everyday tasks. Referred to as ‘critical deployment processes’ (or CDPs) these activities include: (1) Ensuring that the proposed future strategic direction for the organization is effectively communicated to all employees such that they understand what are the future strategic objectives and how these fit with the assigned responsibilities of the departments in which they work. (2) Ensuring that organization infrastructure is ‘fit for purpose’. It may be the case that certain objectives will require the formation of specifically tasked improvement teams.

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  The Strategic Planning Process

  Understanding Strategy in Global Markets

  • Marios Katsioloudes, Arpi K Abouhanian(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7 Implementing and executing strategies in the business and functional levels

  Learning objectives:

  After reading this chapter, readers will be able to: • Discuss the critical role of strategy implementation and execution as part of the strategic planning process model. • Recognize the importance of interrelationship between the different types of implementation tools to have successful strategy implementation and execution. • Explain the various aspects of organizational structure as a Strategic Implementation and execution variable. • Explain the various aspects of organizational culture as a Strategic Implementation and execution variable. • Recognize the role and influence of leadership on strategy implementation and execution.

  This chapter will focus on the part of the Strategic Planning Process (SPP) that involves implementing our strategic plans. Thus far, the concentration is largely upon the formulation of the plans themselves; merely mentioning that implementation and execution should be part of our considerations. Hopefully, going through the material in this chapter, you will begin to see why this part of the process is so important. In addressing these concerns, some material already discussed previously will be revisited in a somewhat different context, and we will introduce some new material.

  What is implementation/execution? Why are they so important?

  As you might guess, strategy implementation is simply the set of activities and decisions necessary to turn the organization’s corporate and business strategies into reality. On the other hand, strategy execution is the set of decisions and activities undertaken to turn the implemented strategies into a commercial success that will grasp the best possible results.1 Like many definitions, this one is easy to state and remember, but its implications are deceptively far-reaching. What is the difference between implementation and execution? When Qatar’s Supreme Education Council issued a decree back in 2012 that, “Arabic should be the official teaching language at Qatar University,” this was part of the council’s strategy to preserve the country’s heritage and culture while preparing the nationals to take leadership positions in the competitive market.2 As a result, the University started to teach in Arabic language. Hence, this is strategy implementation. On the other hand, recruiting Arabic faculty members, translating the content of the courses to Arabic language, and preparing assessments in Arabic language are all part of strategy execution. Without the aforementioned activities, the results within the context of the implemented strategy would not be yielded.3 Just how important are

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  Current Theory and Research in Transforming Organizations

  • Chester A. Schriesheim, Linda L. Neider(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Along their in- terface the two disciplines meet and support each other, as suggested in Fig- ure 5.2. 8 The implication is that though strategy formulation and strategy implementation often occur sequentially this is not a given; it is a constant challenge for managers to articulate and hone any given strategy, including identify when new strategies have emerged and take action accordingly. Likewise, though organizational change can involve many change related and developmental directed activities that need to occur in a sequence this too is not a given. In both cases it is difficult to identify causal relation- ships—what stresses along their borders require the most support, and what in particular will lead to the desired performance outcome. Logic suggests these disciplines involve discrete, often highly interde- pendent strategic activities and change-related activities. Those that can be traditionally associated with strategic management and the organiza- tion’s strategists or leadership can be measured as units of progress, as achieved by various discrete, strategically directed activities, while those normally associated with organizational change and change agents can be measured by evaluating specific change outcomes, as achieved by specific change directed activities. These activity sets imply “an entire problem- solving sequence” (Bryson & Bromiley, 1993, p. 320). Essentially, strategy implementation is focussed on achieving a particular strategy or fit or value creating/value appropriating related performance objectives, and necessarily involves highly capability-dependent activities. Organizational change is system-centric and involves the application of behavioral science Strategy Implementation as a Dynamic Capability  121 to bring about and reinforce change of all kinds.

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  Contemporary Themes in Strategic People Management

  A Case-Based Approach

  • David Hall, Stephen Pilbeam, Marjorie Corbridge(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 23 More Effective Implementation of Strategic Change Managing the change process Marjorie Corbridge, Mark Power and Rebecca Kopecek There are many important strategic development tools such as SWOT – TOWS, PESTLE, Porter’s five forces analysis, the STEP model and Scenario planning, which have stood the test of time and have provided alternative ways of approach-ing the job of strategic planning, and these will not be rehearsed here. However according to Jackson Good strategies don’t create value; it’s implementing good strategies which creates value. But ... getting new business strategies successfully implemented can be really tough. ... You might think that implementing strategy in the corporate setting should be easy. The [leaders] in the corner offices simply lay down the plan, and the rest of the organisation gets into line, right? Actually, it doesn’t work like that. (2011: 61) Sterling (2003: 27) also contends that ‘ ... effective implementation of an aver-age strategy beats mediocre implementation of a great strategy every time. ... Yet companies nonetheless often fail to operationalize their strategies in ways that improve the likelihood that they will be implemented effectively’. The common factor is not the development of the strategy that determines its success but rather the implementation of strategy and the need to manage the change effectively that are the key success factors. The common message from this is that whilst developing strategic business plans is important in ensuring the viability of an organisation it is from the execution of those plans that the real business benefits are derived. MARJORIE CORBRIDGE, MARK POWER AND REBECCA KOPECEK 265 Implementing strategic policy change Effective implementation of strategic change involves a structured and well-managed approach to ensure that the right things are done at the right time. Raps (2005) identifies 10 critical points to address the difficulties that can emerge in implementation.

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  The Accidental CIO

  A Lean and Agile Playbook for IT Leaders

  • Scott Millett(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Business Strategy & Goals / Strategic Objectives The Where to Play and How to Win choices. Strategic Actions / Department Strategy / Strategic Contribution / Strategic Plays / Strategic Intent / Product Strategy The high-level actions that each department will contribute to achieving the strategy. Tactical level / mid-term view How we do it Strategic Initiatives & Measures / Stra- tegic Plans / Tactics / OKRs (objectives) If strategy is about what you want to achieve, a strategic initiative explains how you can achieve it. Operational level / short- term view How we exe- cute it Programs A collection of projects with a common theme, to deliver an initaitive. Projects / OKRs (tactics) Can be mandatory, linked to strategy, run the business, or technical/security. IT Strategic Contribution 333 Creating an IT Strategy Figure 11.3 shows the inputs, process, and outputs of an IT strategy. Ideally, as an input you will have a well-thought-through, explicit, and clear business strategy communi- cated to an aligned organization to anchor IT strategic actions. However, the reality is that we don’t live in a perfect world, and often you will need to make assumptions about the strategic direction of your business. If you don’t have an explicit business strategy you can assume one from what you know about the business aspirations, context, and operating model or from understanding departments’ strategic focus and needs. The reason why it’s important to understand strategy is so that we can determine the key initiatives, from the many requests we have, that are directly linked to delivering that strategy. With a focus on the critical areas, we can then uncover the obstacles and bar- riers we have and determine the list of business and technical actions that are required to overcome them, thus ensuring our efforts and actions have the maximum impact.

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  Essentials of Strategic Management

  • Charles Hill, Gareth Jones(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Strategic Change The movement of a company away from its present state toward some desired future state to increase its competitive advantage and profi tability. Reengineering A process whereby, in their effort to boost company performance, managers focus not on the company’s functional activities but on the business processes underlying its value creation operations. Business Process Any business activity, such as order processing, inventory control, or product design, that is vital to delivering goods and services to customers quickly or that promotes high quality or low costs. Chapter 8 Strategic Change: Implementing Strategies to Build and Develop a Company 201 OVERVIEW In Chapter 7 we examined the different corporate-level strategies that managers can pursue to increase a company’s long-run profitability. All these choices of strategy have important implications for a company’s future prosperity, and it is vital that managers understand the issues and problems involved in implementing these strat-egies if the strategies are to be successful. We begin this chapter by examining the nature of strategic change and the obstacles that may hinder managers’ attempts to change a company’s strategy and structure to improve its future performance. We then focus on the steps managers can take to overcome these obstacles and make their efforts to change a company successful.

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