Strategy Execution: What you need to know
Strategic Management overview
Before attempting to understand Strategy Execution, you must have an
understanding of Strategic Management and its purpose in your organization.
What is Strategic Management
Strategic management is the process of establishing goals, processes, and
objectives to improve the competitiveness of a firm or organization. Typically, strategic
management focuses on efficiently allocating personnel and resources to meet these
objectives. Strategic management frequently includes strategy appraisal, internal
organization analysis, and strategy implementation.
Why is Strategic Management Important?
Strategic management is critical in business since it helps a corporation identify
operational improvement opportunities. They can either follow an analytical approach
that identifies possible hazards and possibilities, or they can simply follow broad rules in
many circumstances.
Depending on the nature of the business, a companys strategic management
plan might be prescriptive or descriptive. A prescriptive model specifies development
and execution strategies. On the other hand, a descriptive technique describes how a
company may put these plans into action.
The Strategic Management framework can be illustrated as seen below; (take note of
where Strategy Execution lies in this process)
1. Strategy setting: this stage involves determining the businesss vision, mission,
and objectives.
2. Situational analysis: in this stage, a detailed analysis of internal business
processes and the external operating environment is performed.
3. Strategic planning: accounting for information gathered at previously stated
stages, a strategic and operational plan is developed to execute the business
aspirations.
4. Strategy execution: Strategy Execution is the process of putting strategic plans
into action to achieve the desired business aspirations. This process will be
explored in detail in this article.
5. Strategy evaluation and control: this process involves assessing performance
levels realized and developing interventions to direct future performance.
Strategy Execution
Strategy Execution is putting strategic plans into action to achieve the desired
business aspirations.
It can also be defined as how a company should establish, employ, and integrate
organizational structure, control systems, and culture to follow strategies that lead to
competitive advantage and improved performance. Strategic implementation addresses
the "who," "where," "when," and "how" of achieving desired goals and objectives, and as
such, it is crucial to a companys success. It concentrates on the entire company.
Implementation begins after environmental scans, SWOT analysis, and establishing
strategic concerns and goals. Employees are assigned particular value developing
activities and duties. Organizational structure specifies how these tasks and roles might
be associated with optimizing efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction—the pillars
of competitive advantage. However, organizational structure alone is insufficient to
encourage employees.
A system of administrative control is also necessary. This management tool provides
managers with staff motivating incentives and feedback structures on employee and
organizational performance.
It is essential at this stage to consider the culture of your organization. Organizational
culture is the specific collection of values, attitudes, conventions, and beliefs held by
organizational people and groups. This will affect how individual and team-level
objectives will be handled and what implementation success will be realized as a result.
The primary phases in putting a strategy into action can be summarized as
follows:
1. Creating a company capable of carrying out a strategy: Consider culture, skills,
brand awareness, and resources as a whole.
2. Invest a large amount of money in activities critical to the strategys success.
3. Developing policies that encourage strategic thinking.
4. Using the most effective policies and procedures to achieve continuous
improvement.
5. Creating a link between the incentive system and the achievement of goals.
Avoiding Implementation failure
If well-crafted strategies are not adequately implemented, they fail. If a companys
strategies consistently fail, a large threat exists to its sustainability. It is also important to
remember that strategy execution is vital for each organizational dimension, such as
organizational structure, reward system, resource allocation procedure, and so on, to be
optimized.
To avoid failure in executing the strategy execution process is rightfully viewed
as an iterative process as expressed below:
The companys vision represents the "winning aspirations" of the business. This is the
answer to the question, "What is success to your organization?" This, as such, remains
consistent in the short term and specifies the direction in which the organization as a
whole is set to move.
The strategy speaks to the organizational mission and values. This is how the vision is
translated into the organizations structure and the prevailing culture of the business. It is
determined by using estimations and expectations of how stakeholders contribute and
respond to business activities. As such, the strategy should be viewed as dynamic.
While the experiences inform the expectations that feed into strategy informs the
expectations that feed into strategy of top leadership and analysis of the business
environment, there is no guarantee that they will be what comes to pass. Adjustments
should be made to the strategy from time to time in line with changes in both the internal
and external operating environment.
The implementation plan is the step-by-step process of translating the strategy and
organizational vision to day-to-day activities to maintain desired results. The plan
involves determining projects of focus and desired performance levels at each level.
Beyond determining these, deadlines, accountabilities, and ownership are assigned
to specific teams and individuals concerning the projects of choice. The assignment is
essential as this clarifies performance expectations for each team and individual, thus
creating an ideal situation for the appropriate efforts to be put into achieving goals set.
The final step involves monitoring the performance of individuals and teams who have
been assigned responsibility, noting areas where adjustments need to be made to
the strategy, rewarding high performers, and creating performance improvement plans
for low performers.
How to Succeed in Strategy Execution?
To execute defined plans, a company must first establish yearly targets, create policies,
inspire personnel, and allocate resources. Creating a successful organizational
structure, redirecting marketing efforts, setting budgets, building and leveraging
information systems, and tying employee remuneration to organizational performance
are all part of strategy execution.
The strategy implementation stage of strategic management is mobilizing people and
managers to put stated plans into action. Strategy execution, which is often seen as the
most challenging stage in strategic management, necessitates personal discipline,
dedication, and sacrifice. Managers ability to inspire staff, which is more of an art than a
science, is critical to strategy implementation success. Strategies that are developed but
not implemented are useless.
For a successful strategy execution, interpe rsonal skills are very important.
All employees and management in an organization are affected by strategy
implementation efforts.
Answers to queries like "What must we do to implement our share of the organizations
strategy?" must be decided by each division and department. "How can we get the task
done most efficiently?" and "How can we get the job done most efficiently?" The
difficulty of implementation is to motivate managers and people across a company to
work with pride and passion toward achieving specified goals.
The design of an effective plan does not ensure its implementation. Doing something
(strategy implementation) is usually more difficult than saying youll do it (strategy
formulation)!
Even the most technically flawless strategy plan will be useless if it is not put into action.
Many businesses devote an excessive amount of time, money, and effort to establishing
the strategic plan while neglecting to consider the means and conditions by which it will
be implemented! Change occurs due to execution and assessment, not as a result of
the plan. A technically flawed plan that is skilfully implemented will achieve more than a
great plan that never leaves the computer screen.
