Making Strategy Work

"Strategic planning has been applied by organizations large and small to shape their futures."

"What is the key to successful strategy implementation? Realigning an organization's "influence systems" in order to change individual and organizational behaviors."

"Companies that have taken an integrated approach to realigning their influence systems have enjoyed better-than-average performance."

"Following the Making Strategy Work process brings rigor and integration to an effort that is often ad hoc, uncoordinated, and segmented?which is why most strategy implementation efforts fail. "

"Sound project management is crucial to addressing the complexities of strategy implementation in organizations consisting of varying functions, divisions, and locations."

"Participants include an advisory team, a sponsor, a project manager, a core team, and several alignment task forces."

"The strategy clarification subteam should approach their effort as a miniproject within the overall strategy implementation endeavor."

"Fast growth creates huge challenges in creating and maintaining organizational competencies."

"If the concept of competencies is so confusing, why is there so much interest in them as they relate to strategy implementation?"

"The current assessment subteam should approach its effort as a miniproject within the overall strategy deployment endeavor."

"Some may think it is splitting hairs, but there is a difference between the terms benchmarking and best practices, and in many organizations there is a lot of confusion over the difference."

"There are five key questions that Alignment Task Force members need to ask themselves when generating redesign recommendations."

"Each task force must also consider whether its approach to implementation should either be pragmatic or accelerated."

"Once measures are developed, they should be used to build accountability among management and employees."

"The mistakes most often made during strategy implementation are related to lack of focus and coordination, and the belief that a well-designed strategy will implement itself."