Strategy Implementation as Substance and Selling

Today's strategists are at no loss for concepts and techniques to help them formulate strategies. Over the past 15 years, consultants and academic researchers have introduced a variety of powerful and pragmatic tools for answering the question, "Where and how should we compete?" Tools such as industry and competitor analysis, portfolio models, product life-cycle theory, and internal strength and weakness analysis have gained widespread use.1 Many executives now express satisfaction with the methods used to derive their business strategies. But many of these "best-laid plans" are failing to see the light of day. Plans to innovate fizzle out after a series of task-force meetings; plans to improve quality get no farther than some airy rhetoric and the hiring of a "quality guru"; and plans to become the low-cost producer bog down when corporate officers balk at expensive outlays for plant modernization. In short, many of our strategies simply aren't happening. Without successful implementation, a strategy is but a fantasy. This problem how to convert a new strategy into concrete competitive success is what managers now need frameworks for, and is the focus of our article. Actually, the widespread inability to implement strategy may be a sign that accepted approaches to strategy formulation are not as good as many think they are, for a well-conceived strategy is one that is implementable. For that reason, implementation must be considered during the formulation process, not later, when it may be too late. A tendency to treat formulation and implementation as two separate phases is at the root of many failed strategies.2 Regrettably, the recent trend among consultants and business schools to treat strategy formulation as being primarily based on industry and product/market economics exacerbates the schism. The strategist will not be able to nail down every action step when the strategy is first crafted nor, as we will later argue, should this even be attempted. However, he or she must have the ability to look ahead at the major implementation obstacles and ask, "Is this strategy workable? Can I make it happen?" If an honest assessment yields "no" or "only at an unacceptable risk," then the formulation process must continue. A great strategy is only great if it can actually be carried out. Thus, the guidelines we offer in this article about implementation must be in the mindset of the strategist even at the earliest formulation stages. Our ideas about strategy implementation have evolved on the basis of situations we have observed in numerous firms, as well as a long and careful reading of the literature on the topic.3 However, our thoughts have been crystallized and clarified particularly by a recent opportunity to study several successful and unsuccessful implementations of business strategies in a large multibusiness firm. The top management of this company, which we will call Globus, had concluded that the major difference between competitive success and failure for its business units lay more in matters of strategy implementation than formulation, and they sought to understand the common ingredients of their own most effective business strategy implementations. At Globus, we had an opportunity to examine a broad range of plans for strategic change for achieving low cost position, going global, consolidating, and others. Here, we will draw on one of the businesses we studied the Bondall Division to illustrate the very persuasive, recurring themes we observed. Succinctly put, and portrayed in Exhibit 1, these were the patterns of behavior for the effective strategy implementers at Bondall and the other units we studied: 1. Obtain broad-based inputs and participation at the formulation stage. 2. Carefully and deliberately assess the obstacles to implementation. 3. Make early, first-cut moves across the full array of implementation levers resource commitments, subunit policies and programs, structure, people, and rewards. 4. Sell, sell, sell the strategy to everyone who matters upward, downward, across, and outward. 5. Steadily fine tune, adjust, and respond as events and trends arise.