The funding requirements of a new strategy must drive how capital allocations are made and the size of each unit's operating budgets. Under funding organizational units and activities pivotal to strategic success impedes execution and the drive for operating excellence.

Well-conceived policies and procedures aid strategy execution; out-of-sync ones are barriers.

Managerial efforts to identify and adopt best practices are a powerful tool for promoting operating excellence and better strategy execution.

A best practice is any practice that at least one company has proved works particularly well.

TQM entails creating a total quality culture bent on continuously improving the performance of every task and value chain activity.

Business processes reengineering aims at one-time quantum improvement; continuous improvement programs like TQM and Six Sigma aim at ongoing incremental improvements.

The purpose of using benchmarking, best practices, business process reengineering,

TQM, Six Sigma, or other operational improvement programs is to improve the performance of strategy-critical activities and enhance strategy execution.

State-of-the-art support systems can be a basis for competitive advantage if they give a firm capabilities that rivals can't match.

Having good information systems and operating data are integral to competent strategy execution and operating excellence.

A properly designed reward structure is management's most powerful tool for mobilizing organizational commitment to successful strategy execution.

One of management's biggest strategy-executing challenges is to employ motivational techniques that build wholehearted commitment to operating excellence and winning attitudes among employees.

A properly designed reward system aligns the well-being of organization members with their contributions to competent strategy execution and the achievement of performance targets.

It is folly to reward one outcome in hopes of getting another outcome.

The role of the reward system is to align the well-being of organization members with realizing the company's vision, so that organization members benefit by helping the company execute its strategy competently and fully satisfy customers.

The unwavering standard for judging whether individuals, teams, and organizational units have done a good job must be whether they meet or beat performance targets that reflect good strategy execution.