All managers have strategy-executing
responsibility in their
areas of authority, and all employees
participate in the
strategy execution process.
Companies don't implement
and execute strategies;
people do.
When strategies fail, it is often
because of poor execution—
things that were supposed to
get done slip through the
cracks.
Putting together a talented
management team with the
right mix of skills and experiences
is one of the first
strategy-implementing steps.
In many industries adding to a
company's talent base and
building intellectual capital is
more important to strategy execution
than additional investments
in plants, equipment,
and other hard assets.
Building competencies and capabilities
has a huge payoff—
improved strategy execution
and a potential for competitive
advantage.
Outsourcing—reducing the number of internal staff-support activities and instead relying on outside vendors with specialized expertise to supply noncritical support services--has many strategy-executing
advantages—lower
costs, less internal bureaucracy,
speedier decision-making, and
heightened strategic focus.
Strategic partnerships, alliances,
and close collaboration
with suppliers, distributors,
makers of complementary
products, and even competitors
all make good strategic sense
whenever the result is to enhance
organizational resources
and capabilities.
Just as a company's strategy
evolves to stay in tune with
changing external circumstances,
so must an organization's
structure evolve to fit
shifting requirements for proficient
strategy execution.
Business process reengineering
involves pulling the
pieces of a strategy-critical
process out of various functional
departments and integrating
them into a
streamlined, cohesive series of
work steps performed within a
single work unit.
The ultimate goal of decentralized
decision making is not to
push decisions down to lower
levels but to put decision-making
authority in the hands
of those persons or teams closest
to and most knowledgeable
about the situation.
Organizational capabilities
emerge from a process of consciously
knitting together the
efforts of different work groups,
departments, and external allies,
not from how the boxes on
the organization chart are
arranged.
