Strategic planning or “Strategy making” is difficult. It demands time and attention paid to industry forces, competitor’s actions, and organizational capabilities and investments. Planning involves positioning decisions and steps to differentiate the organization in significant ways and then protecting its position from competitive challenges and risks.

As difficult as strategy making is, making strategy work is even more difficult and challenging. There are tremendous obstacles to effective strategy execution or implementation. Some of those arise from the conditions or demands of the execution process, including the following:

• The need to get many more people involved in execution than were involved in planning.
• The longer timeframes associated with the process of strategy implementation and the resultant probability that competitive forces or conditions will change over time.
• The existence of many factors or variables that can affect execution results or success, and the need to handle them effectively to achieve desired outcomes.

A related challenge is the high interdependences among execution-related decisions and actions. Changing one factor can affect needed changes in other factors and variables; a situation that clearly demands an integrated process or approach to making strategy work.

It is important to incorporate in the discussion the key decisions and actions of the execution process, including those emanating from the demands strategy places on the organization; the role of organizational structure and coordination requirements associated with it; the need for clear responsibility and accountability in execution decisions; the need to define effective incentives and controls; and the importance of managing change, including culture change, to achieve successful execution outcomes.

A major differentiating aspect of the current approach to make strategy work is the development and use of an integrated model that ties together key decisions and actions. It is not sufficient to mention key variables or factors in the process of strategy implementation, it is imperative to focus as well on the interdependence of these factors and how their interactions affect overall execution outcomes. Be aware the company culture plays a crucial role to make execution outcomes a reality, no matter how well-designed your strategic plan is, it will fall flat unless your team shares the appropriate culture: Do not let culture to eat your strategy for breakfast!

Based on Top Management and Managers’ feedback, these are the main obstacles to effective strategy execution:

1. Inability to manage change effectively and overcome resistance to change.
2. A poor or vague strategy.
3. Not having guideline or a model to guide strategy-execution efforts.
4. Trying to execute a strategy that conflicts with the existing power structure.
5. Poor or inadequate information sharing between individuals, business, or functional units responsible for strategy execution.
6. Unclear communication of responsibility or accountability for execution decisions or actions.
7. Lack of feelings of ownership of a strategy or of execution steps or plans among key employees.
8. Lack of understanding of the role of organizational structure and design in the execution process.

The issues previously noted are serious, potentially impeding execution, they need to be addressed but while doing so, it is necessary to keep in mind that:

• Execution is key for sustainable business success.
• Making strategy work in more difficult than the task of strategy making.
• A focus on making strategy work pays major dividends.
• Managers are mostly trained to plan, not execute.
• Many Top Level and Managers believe that strategy execution or implementation is “below them”.
• Planning and execution are interdependent.
• Execution takes longer than formulation.
• Execution is a process, not an action or step.

Is your strategy working?

How do you know?

Is it helping you to achieve sustainable business results?

We are here to help!

Contact us for a Dogma C3X free trial!

Dogma C3X is an Intelligent Business Consulting Platform inspired by the 3Cs industry model, which offers a strategic look at the pillars that every company needs for success: Customers – Company – Competitors. "Intelligent" because by using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) it can collect, process, and analyze the growing tsunami of data (structured and unstructured) related to the 3Cs, which is incredibly valuable. Only by strengthening, positioning, and integrating these three pillars (Customers - Company - Competitors) you will be able to build a sustainable competitive advantage.