STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AND EXECUTION

Strategy Implementation

Strategy implementation is concerned with translating a decision into action. This presupposes that thedecision itself (i.e. the strategicchoice) is made with some thoughts being given to feasibility and acceptability. The allocation of resources to new courses of action is needed to be undertaken and there may be a need for adopting the organisation” s structure to handle new activities as well as training personnel and devising appropriate systems. Strategic implementation is often called the action stage of strategic management.

Strategy implementation and execution is essentially an administrative task. This is equally true of putting the strategy in place and getting individuals or the whole of the managerial challenge to “make it happen” It involves the following:

Managers at all levels in the organization are involved in the development of an action agenda for implementation and execution. Each manager starting from the headquarters of the organisation down to each operating department is involved in providing answers to suchquestions as “what is required for us to implement part of our overall strategic plan and how can we best get it done?”

When this is properly done, the tasks will involve scrutinising every operating activity to see what action can be taken in order to improve strategy practices and behaviours in the organisation members.

The task of implementing and executing a strategy is a process ofmoving deliberately to create a variety of “fits” that provides the organisation with strategy. The task of consciously fitting the “way we see things around here” to the requirements of first-rate strategy execution, according to Thompson Strickland, produces a strategy- supportive organisational culture and work climate.

However, implementation fails and is defeated completely if the ingrained attitude, and the practices of the managers and employees are hostile or at cross-purposes with the needs of the strategy, and if their customary ways of doing things block strategy implementation instead of facilitating it.

In view of the importance of proper implementation and execution of strategy to an organisation’s success, Thompson and Strickland suggest that a number of fits are required and they include:

1) Strategy and the internal organisational structure

2) Strategyandorganisationalskills/technicalknow-how/operational capabilities

3) Strategy and the allocation of budgets and staff size

4)Strategy and the organisation’s system of reward and incentives

5) Strategy and internal policies, practices and procedures.

6)Strategy and the internal organisation’s atmosphere, which are determined by the values and beliefs shared by managers and employees, the philosophies and decision making styles of senior managers, and other factors that make up the organisation’s personality and culture.

Broadly speaking, the management task of strategy implementation is done by scrutinising the whole internal organisation to diagnosis what strategy-supportive approaches would be needed and the actions to take to accomplish such strategies. In this task, the different pieces of the implementation plan need to be arranged into a pattern of action that will produce an orderly change from the old strategy to the new strategy. The management will need to ensure that the necessary changes embarked upon will not create disruption and disaster.

In this regard, both the sequence of actions and the speed of implementation are important aspects of uniting the entire organisation behind strategy accomplishment. The challenge to the leadership of the organisation is how to stimulate the enthusiasm, pride, commitment and dedication of managers and employees such that an organization-wide crusade emerges to carry out the chosen strategy and to achieve the targeted results.

Thompson and Strickland consistently maintain that the two things that lie at the root of what separates the best managed organisations from the rest are:

a.Supervisor entrepreneurship involving a well-conceived strategy plan that positions the organisation in the right way at the righttime.

b.Competent implementation and execution of the chosen strategy.

They noted that a well-formulated, well implemented and executed strategy is the surest route to achieving an attractive competitive advantage and enhanced organisational performance over the long term. Practitioners emphatically state that it is a whole lot easier to develop a sound strategic plan than to implement it or “make it happen”.

Strategy Implementation and Organisational Structure

The job of a strategy manager is complicated when it comes to implementation due to the number of tasks to be performed and the variety of ways in which each of them can be approached.

For successful implementation of a strategy, it has to be along the organisation” s overall condition and setting, the nature of the strategy and the amount of strategy change envisaged. That is to say, shifting to a bold new strategy poses different implementation problems than fine-tuning the strategy already in place. Strategy implementation will also have to be guided along the manager”s own skills, style and methods.

Strategy implementation includes developing an effective organisational structure, redirecting marketing efforts, preparing budgets, developing and utilizing information systems and motivating individuals to act.

Implementing entails mobilising the employees and managers to put formulated strategies into action. Strategic implementation is the most difficult stage in strategicmanagement. It requires personal andpersonnel discipline, commitment and sacrifice.

Successful strategy implementation hinges upon the manager’s ability to motivate employees, which is more of an art than a science. Strategies formulated but not implemented serve no useful purposes.

Strategy implementation activities affect both employees and managers in the organisation. Every department, division or unit must be involved.

The challenge of implementation is to stimulate managersand employees throughout an organisation to work with pride towards achieving stated objectives.

For effective and adequate Strategic implementation, some organisations development corporate culture and whatever strategy is to be implemented must follow that culture. For example, in Japan, there is an employment pool for an organisation. This is with the concept that the longer an employee is kept in this regard of the corporate culture “this is the way we do it”. This may create a problem and the strategist must make a decision on how to turn around the fortunes of an ailing organisation, in which case he has the line of the organisation’s culture. There must be the right leadership to implement the necessary strategy in order to achieve the corporate objectives. Usually, an organisation’s culture is one of the major barriers to strategy implementation. If a change is carried out at allcosts, the implementation may fail if consideration is not given to the organization’s culture and structure.

Matching Organisation’s Structure Strategy

A few hard and fast rules must be considered for a strategic implementation to be successful. This is because every strategy is grounded in its own set of key success factors and certain critical tasks. Also, every firm has some historical backgrounds based on the previous organisation’s decisions. The easy way out is to design the internal organisational structure around key success factors and critical tasks inherent in the firms strategy. This implies that the organisation’s structure must be matched with the formulated strategies for success. To be able to achieve this Thompson and Strickland highlights five sequence procedures as a useful guide for fitting structure to strategy.

They are:

(i) Pinpoint the key functions and task requisite for successful strategy execution.

(ii) Reflect on how the strategy’s critical functions and organisational

units relate to those that are routine and to those that provide staff support.