What is Strategy Implementation? A Quick Overview video transcript

Hi I’m Bob Legge with another video on strategy implementation and today I want to give you an overview of what strategy implementation is and what the key parts of it are.

Strategy implementation is making the strategy come alive and successfully achieving the strategic objectives.

There are 4 key parts to strategy implementation: The first one is having an action plan. An action plan is composed of the projects, initiatives and various things that need to happen to achieve the strategy and who's accountable for each one of those and a timeline involved and also and very importantly keeping up with that, regularly looking at it, gauging progress, making corrections where needed, that’s all the action plan. Many companies have action plans but they tend to stop right there and they don’t work on the other 3 very important parts of strategy implementation. The first of those is the strategy itself, making sure that you’ve got a strategy that’s clear, concise and compelling – very vivid for the organisation, motivating. It tells here where we’re headed, here’s how we’re going to compete, here’s why its important to us and enables people to connect to themselves and what they’re doing to the strategy. Without that you’re losing a big big influence on the organisation. The next one is leadership itself. You need good leadership in order to formulate the strategy but also to articulate the strategy and communicate it throughout the organisation and that needs to happen over and over and over and over again.

My rule of thumb is that by the time that you’re sick and tired of communicating strategy, that’s when you’re beginning to get through to the organisation. And then finally maintaining the focus of the organisation on the strategy through the long term. Organisations are easily distracted and want to take on other things and its very important to identify what is the strategy and what isn’t the strategy and stay focused, that's the role of the leader to say no we’re not going to do those other things. And then finally there’s the organisation itself, you need to sharply focus the organisation on the strategy and without this you are losing a lot of efficiency and you’re gaining a lot of distraction. This is a lot of work, involves making sure that the organisation structure is the right one for the strategy. Its making sure that you’ve got the best people in key positions to drive that strategy forward. It’s looking at processes and in particular, the key processes that go across organisation functions, the ones that really drive value for the customer, making sure that those are as efficient and seamless as possible. Also looking at incentives throughout the organisation making sure that they’re aligned. There’s many examples of incentives that are aligned with the strategy and help defeat the implementation and success of the strategy.

And then finally in organisation alignment is aligning the management processes, things like performance management for example. Its very important that those things reinforce the strategy.

So there you have it. It’s an action plan, a strategy itself that’s very clear and compelling, leadership that can drive it successfully forward and aligning the organisation with the strategy. If you can do those things well you actually create a competitive advantage as far as your organisation is concerned. Your organisation has competitive advantage.

Thank you for watching. Check out my other videos. Talk to you soon.

What is Strategy Implementation? A Quick Overview video

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