Strategy implementation is the translation of chosen strategy into

organizational action so as to achieve strategic goals and objectives.

Strategy implementation is also defined as the manner in which an
organization should develop, utilize, and amalgamate organizational
structure, control systems, and culture to follow strategies that lead to
competitive advantage and a better performance. Organizational
structure allocates special value developing tasks and roles to the
employees and states how these tasks and roles can be correlated so
as maximize efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction-the pillars of
competitive advantage. But, organizational structure is not sufficient in
itself to motivate the employees.

An organizational control system is also required. This control system

equips managers with motivational incentives for employees as well as
feedback on employees and organizational performance.
Organizational culture refers to the specialized collection of values,
attitudes, norms and beliefs shared by organizational members and
groups.

Follwoing are the main steps in implementing a strategy:

Developing an organization having potential of carrying out strategy
successfully.
Disbursement of abundant resources to strategy-essential activities.
Creating strategy-encouraging policies.
Employing best policies and programs for constant improvement.
Linking reward structure to accomplishment of results.
Making use of strategic leadership.
Excellently formulated strategies will fail if they are not properly
implemented. Also, it is essential to note that strategy implementation
is not possible unless there is stability between strategy and each
organizational dimension such as organizational structure, reward
structure, resource-allocation process, etc.

Strategy implementation poses a threat to many managers and

employees in an organization. New power relationships are predicted
and achieved. New groups (formal as well as informal) are formed
whose values, attitudes, beliefs and concerns may not be known. With

the change in power and status roles, the managers and employees
may employ confrontation behaviour.

Concept Of Strategy Implementation

Strategy implementation is "the process of allocating resources to support
the chosen strategies". This process includes the various management
activities that are necessary to put strategy in motion, institute strategic
controls that monitor progress, and ultimately achieve organizational goals.
Implementing The Strategy And Evaluating The Results
Thomas V. Bonoma suggests that successful implementation of strategies
requires four basic types of execution skills:

* Interacting skills are expressed in managing one's own and others' behavior
to achieve objectives.

* Allocating skills are brought to bear in managers' abilities to schedule tasks

and budget time, money, and other resources efficiently.

* Monitoring skills involve the efficient use of information to correct any

problems that arise in the process of implementation.

* Organizing skills are exhibited in the ability to create a new informal

organization or network to match each problem that occurs.

General Framework For Strategy Implementation

The first step in implementation is identifying the activities, decisions, and
relationships critical to accomplishing the activities.

There are six principal administrative tasks that shape a manager's action
agenda for implementing strategy. In general, every unit of an organization
has to ask, "What is required for us to implement our part of the overall
strategic plan and how can we best get it done?".

The specific components of each of the six strategy-implementation tasks:

Building an organization capable of executing the strategy. The

organization must have the structure necessary to turn the strategy into
reality. Furthermore, the firm's personnel must possess the skill needed to
execute the strategy successfully. Related to this is the need to assign the
responsibility for accomplish key implementation tasks to the right individuals
or groups.
Establishing a strategy-supportive budget. If the firm is to accomplish
strategic objectives, top management must provide the people, equipment,
facilities, and other resources to carry out its part of the strategic plan.
Further, once the strategy has been decided on, the key tasks to performed
and kinds of decision required must be identified, formal plans must also be
developed. The tasks should be arranged in a sequence comprising a plan of
action within targets to be achieved at specific dates.
Installing internal administrative support systems. Internal systems are
policies and procedures to establish desired types of behavior, information
systems to provide strategy-critical information on a timely basis, and
whatever inventory, materials management, customer service, cost
accounting, and other administrative systems are needed to give the
organization important strategy-executing capability. These internal systems
must support the management process, the way the managers in an
organization work together, as well as monitor strategic progress.
Devising rewards and incentives that are tightly linked to objectives
and strategy. People and departments of the firm must be influenced,
through incentives, constraints, control, standards, and rewards, to
accomplish the strategy.
Shaping the corporate culture to fit the strategy. A strategy-supportive
corporate culture causes the organization to work hard (and intelligently)
toward the accomplishment of the strategy.
Exercising strategic leadership. Strategic leadership consists of obtaining
commitment to the strategy and its accomplishment. It also involves the
constructive use of power and politics, and politics in building a consensus to
support the strategy.

Strategy And Structure

Each strategy has an associated organizational structure consistent with the

strategy and diversification. These relationships are summarized in the tale

below.

Strategy
Single business
Vertical by Products
Related businesses

Structure
Functional
Functional with profit centers
Divisional

Intermediate businesses Mixed structures

Unrelated Businesses

Holding company

Problems Of Successful Implementation

Problems of successful implementation centre around how well or badly the
existing organization responds and how adequate its reporting proves to be.

According to Arthur A. Owen, in practice there are four problem areas

associated with the successful implementation of strategies:

The first problem is that, although strategies need to be developed around

the business units (SBUs), of the corporation, these units often do not
correspond to parts of the organizations structure. Business units have an
external market-place for goods and services, and their management can
plan and execute strategies independent of other pieces of the company.
Moreover, the organization structure - and how that functions - derives from
its history of take-over, tax considerations, shareholders considerations,
economies of scale, personnel strengths and weaknesses, national legal
requirements, and so on. Therefore, at any time strategy and structure need
to be matched and supportive of each other.

Strategic planners must attempt to cut through the culture of diversified

corporation and to plan in relation to the various competitive environments
by identifying the strategies for them.

Moreover, these strategies still have to be implemented by the organization

as a whole.

A second problem area is that traditional management reports are not

sensitive enough to monitor the implementation strategies, thus the strategic
manager not fully aware of what is happening. Hence the performance of
existing structure is not monitored properly, and as a result control
mechanisms may be ineffective.

Third, implementing strategy involves change, which in turn involves

uncertainty and risk. Therefore, motivating managers to make changes is a
key determinant.

Finally, management systems (such as compensation schemes, management

development, communications systems and so on) are often in place as a
result of past strategies; they are rarely tuned or revised to meet the needs
of new ones.

Alexander adds additional factors that are also significant:

the failure to predict the time and problems which implementation will
involve;
other activities and commitments that distract attention and possibly cause
resources to be diverted;
that the bases upon which the strategies were formulated change, or were
forecast poorly and insufficient flexibility has been built in.
To counter these problems Owen suggests the following:

allocating clear responsibility and accountability for the success of the overall
strategy project;
limiting the number of strategies pursued at any one time;
identifying actions to be taken to achieve the strategic objective, allocating
detailed responsibilities for actions - and getting agreement for them;
identifying a lists of emilestonesl, or major intermediate progress points;

identifying key performance measures to be monitored throughout the life of

the strategy project, and creating an information system to record progress.