Respond to at least two other student posts
Cory : The topic I have chosen is a quote from Bali Padda chief operating officer of the LEGO Group, who said, “Strategy is only as good as the execution behind it.” I think formulation and execution are related I also think that without strategy you can execute. Obviously, the strategy helps because it allows you to have a game plan. I’m going to give an example that has nothing to do with business, but it is an easier way of describing the strategy. For example: in sports doesn’t matter the age every team practices, those practices are to create a game plan to achieve a goal. Strategy is the same thing it can be a group or a single person that strategizes to achieve a goal.
In the chart on page 5, you see that feeding lessons from successful strategy implementation back into strategy formulation isn’t as important as the other ones. Why I think it isn’t as important because every situation is different, and you can’t always do the same thing as the last time.
Why is strategy so important? The strategy helps us define our business, it gives us a set of values and gives the business a purpose. The strategy helps the business owner map out the future of the business and allows them to have a baseline of the future. The strategy shows the business owner the destination and identifies useful stopping points along the way.
Coming up with a strategic plan isn’t always easy it may take a while to come up with a good strategic plan or a successful one. When coming up with a strategic plan there are many steps you can take; here are five steps you can plan, determine your strategic position, prioritize your objectives, develop a strategic plan, execute, and manage your plan, and review and revise the plan.
Unit, E. I. (2013). Why good strategies fail: Lessons for the C-suite. London: Economist Intelligence Unit Limited.
Trevor:
The data point that really jumps out to me is the high rate of failure to implement strategic initiatives successfully. According to a survey of 587 global executives, over 61% of the respondents claim their employers or firms struggle to close the gap of strategic change.
I just got out of a 6-hour long consultant training put on by my firm today. The consultant was a 30+ year professional in the manufacturing industry who has conducted training and offered firms help on implementing self-directed work teams (SDWT’s). Something that Proctor and Gamble really spotlighted in the 60’s and was successful across their organization. The gentlemen repeatedly emphasized the importance of companies going through a paradigm shift of less authority and more involvement from hourly employees on self-directed teams, that we must stick it out and not give up. It’s going to be tough at first – change is not easy. There are 3 stages of the implementation of strategic formulation with SDWT’s, the current stage, the initiation phase and the future state. The consultant said many companies fail to get out of the initiation phase.
The Economist article continues to offer several other data points and info on the failures. Firms often fail to provide a sufficiently skilled work force capable of implementing the change. There seems to be a failure in the proper implementation for day-to-day operations as well, with almost 50% of the respondents claiming such.
I decided to research the data point that only 28% said their firms don’t give strategic projects the needed attention or prioritization. I really think this boils down to executives not seeing the direct connection to helping the bottom line.
According to Harvard Business Review (Miller, 2020), firms need to adopt strategies that allow that to be sustainable. To be a sustainable business change is evident. Change must come in the form of strategic change. “As firms have increasingly embraced sustainability, they’ve shifted their focus toward creating value for all stakeholders impacted by business decisions, including customers, employees, and community member.” This is similar to a firm adopting self-directed work teams and creating value by empowering the workforce.
“Why is there such a persistent gap between ambition and performance? The gap arises, we believe, from a disconnect in most companies between strategy formulation and strategy execution. Our research reveals that, on average, 95% of a company’s employees are unaware of, or do not understand, its strategy. If the employees who are closest to customers and who operate processes that create value are unaware of the strategy, they surely cannot help the organization implement it effectively” (Kaplan, 2005).
This paragraph from another Harvard Business Review article would suggest why its so important to implement a self-directed work team because they are closest to the operations and have the most knowledge of the interactions and processes to make strategic change affective and successful.
Kaplan, Robert. (October, 2005). The Office of Strategy Management. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-office-of-strategy-management
Miller, Kelsey. (Dec. 8th, 2020). The triple bottom line: what it is & why it’s important. Harvard Business Review. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-the-triple-bottom-line (Links to an external site.)
