Strategy Implementation

The strategy is what connects all the dots in a company. It is what aligns everything. Companies need a direction to follow, a purpose. Strategy provides this. Finding a strategy is fairly difficult as it is but, in theory, you can make everything possible. Implementation, the practice, is where the real fun begins. You can foresight your strategy and asses it, but the result of the implementation is harder to predict.

## Implementing strategy

General managers do not only have to think about a strategy but also how to implement it. They must be able to envision the different steps required to make their vision a reality.

### Key implementation tasks

The principle of implementation is to make sure that the strategy is embodied in everything the organization does. You need a fit with the functional policies and with thePARC, processes, and systems.

#### Functional fits

Once a strategy has been decided, all the functions (marketing, manufacturing, engineering, and finance) should adopt policies that reinforce the corporate strategy. This is harder than it seems as merely communicating the strategy is not enough. The basic character of each and every function often leads to ingrained behaviors. Manufacturing drives toward standardization, marketing toward customers, engineering toward innovation and finance toward costs.

Implementation requires general managers to make sure that the functional policies move toward the decided strategy.

#### Managerial fits

Not only the function should change, but the managerial policies must also be aligned with the strategy decided. They are at least 9 major processes that the manager should invest time and makes sure they are aligned:

1. Organization structure
2. Information systems
3. Incentive systems (key!)
4. Control systems
5. Strategic planning systems
6. Organization processes
7. Management selection and development
8. Corporate culture
9. Leadership style

### The strategic implementation plan (SIP)

The implementation takes place after you have defined the strategic guidelines for your business. A implementation plan needs to contain the breakdown of the strategic guidelines into

A strategic implementation plan needs to be as specific as possible. It should be specific in terms of content, tasks, and timeline. Yet, it must be dynamic and adaptable, for example, you can adapt it to different countries or department. Your SIP should also cover accountability for every task. Once again the more specidifc, the better.

In general, the complexity increase with the number of tasks and the shorter nature of the SIP.

It is really close to project management. Therefore, you can use kanban, scrub, etc., all the tools usually associated with project management.
Managers should identify and focus on up to 3 key fits to address. For each priority, have a plan. The plan must cover human and organizational issues that are likely to arise, present a sequence of actions, and a contingency plan just in case.

#### Contingency plan

Change will come and you cannot predict all of them. You should be able to find a way to mitigate or elimate risks.

The Contingency plan should identify the risk, the workstream involved, action to mitigate, accountability and deadline.

### Needed key skills

To implement a strategy, managers need to master 3 skills: Analysis, leadership, and administration.

## Organization and structure

A company can organize its structure along 3 basic ways: function, product, and geography. Each of them has advantages and trade-off.

Usually, a company will not stick to one but will stack different structures one on top of the other.

## Managing innovation

For more information on innovation, refers to the innovation page

Innovation is key for companies. It allows them to pursue new businesses and stay alive. Yet, not all companies know how to manage innovation.

Morten T.Hansen and Julian Birkinshaw offer a framework to better understand the innovation process.

Innovation as a value chain is compromised of 3 phases: Idea generation, Idea conversion and Idea diffusion.

### Identify your weakest link

 Idea Conversion
 Idea Diffusion

For each item, you should try to find objective criteria to evaluate them. You can count the number of ideas generated, the percentage of funding, time to market, etc.

### How to reinforce your weakest links

Your capacity to innovate can only be as good as your weakest link. Once you have identified your bottleneck, this table below explains some strategy to improve them

 Converting ideas
 Diffusing ideas

## Managing knowledge in a company

See Managing Knowledge for more information.
Organizational knowledge is what makes a company exist. It is a tacit or explicit understanding system of causes and effects. It is formed by previous experiences and is stored in shared mental models, assets, standard operating procedures, rules, and routines. The complex network of all this knowledge is a source of competitive advantage in itself.

Companies' competitive advantages come from their ability to learn and retain the information that may be useful to them. But companies also forget. Forgetting and learning have trades-off, they can be beneficial or detrimental, voluntary or not. In any case, they can affect companies" performances, in the long term or short term. To be able to perform at its best, a company should be able to remember only what it needs to and forget what must be discarded. Managing knowledge is both about learning that it is about forgetting.

Companies should manage their knowledge for 2 reasons. First, it is costly. When a company forgets what it once knew, it has to spend resources and money to acquire this knowledge back. Not only time and money are spent, but the opportunity cost might also be high. Second, learning depends on forgetting. Transforming your business is as much about acquiring new skills and habits that it is about forgetting the previous ones.