5 Secrets to Successful Corporate Strategy Implementation

Corporations around the globe understand and value the importance of strategic planning. A well crafted strategy provides essential vision, direction, and goals for the organization.  Yet what happens when many organizations attempt to realize the outcomes of those meaningful strategies?  Strategy implementation is seriously lacking in most organizations. The skills, knowledge, experience and discipline to succeed are simply not there. 

Don’t believe us? Consider these statistics:

• 90% of organizations fail to successfully implement their strategies. Source: Kaplan and Norton
• Organizations realize just 60% of the potential value of their strategies. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
• The average ROI on most strategic planning initiatives is 34% or less. Source: Harvard Business Review

What’s wrong with strategic implementation in today’s organizations?

There is a simple answer to this question: Strategy implementation requires organizations to take on a set of skills and discipline that are different from its strategic planning counterpart.  Often these skills and discipline are either missing or not well integrated from top to bottom within into the organization.

The biggest difference between strategic implementation and strategic planning is a shift in focus to the day-to-day business operations necessary to move the organization toward its planned direction.

Secrets to effective strategy implementation:

1.  Consideration of the constraints, inhibitors, and accelerators that are required to successfully implement the strategic plan. 

Consider:

• What are our budgetary, time, and resource needs and constraints?
• How will our corporate culture affect our ability to implement successfully?
• How quickly can our organization go from where it is today to where it wants to be?

Answering these questions and others can help you create operational plans that are predictable, realistic, and achievable.

2.  An effective mix of strategic planning and program and project management.

Organizations must place appropriate value on both strategic planning and operational planning to be successful.  Yes, strategy is important. But the rubber meets the road with good old fashioned operational execution.  The combination of the two is where strategic implementation lives.

3.  Careful construction of organizational goals and metrics.

For a plan to be effective it must consider the entire organizational ecosystem – all of the layers of the organization, inside and out. With this understanding, goals and supporting metrics can be defined and promoted downward throughout the organization.

4.  Communication plan.

We suggest that our clients act as if they are marketing their goals and metrics to the operational members of their organization. The communication plan should educate, inform, and assist operational leaders and management in understanding what is expected of them and allow them to do the same with the people they manage. Since tactics will be established by the operational leaders who are responsible for carrying out the goals of the strategic plan, their clear understanding and involvement is a must.

5.  Bi-directional planning approach.

Unlike top down or bottom up planning, bi-directional collaborative goal setting and initiative development between executives and lower level management results in strategy implementation that is consistent and effective.  Organizations that take a top-down only approach will find confusion within the organization and may lack necessary buy-in from lower management necessary to implement effectively. On the other hand, a bottom-up approach may lead the organization drift off course from its desired outcome as managers are left to interpret the strategy in their own way.

In sum, effective strategic implementation relies on an operational plan that produces results while managing time, money, and resource restrictions. The operational plan is the channel through which strategy turns to action. And the plan places much needed accountability for effective implementation on the shoulders of organizational leaders, managers and “doers”.

For more details and examples, read our recently published article on Operational Planning and Strategy Execution.

For permission to use or reprint any portions of this copyrighted article, contact Method Frameworks at articles@methodframeworks.com.

About the Author:

Joe Evans is the President and CEO of Method Frameworks.  Joe is a published author, frequent speaker and recognized expert in corporate strategic planning. To contact Method Frameworks about scheduling Mr. Evans about an upcoming speaking engagement, visit www.methodframeworks.com/business-speaker or email requests to media_relations@methodframeworks.com.

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