Organizational Strategy Execution Today

Q1: What would you expect to happen if you made significant changes in all of the text’s components of execution, in pursuit of a changed strategy?

According to Thompson (et al.) the first step of executing a strategy is ensuring that the organization has the necessary staff for execution. Quite simply, without enough numbers in terms of personnel and without personnel that possess the necessary skills to succeed, the strategy will not thrive. Attempts to ignore this fact will result in failure even with the best intentions. Even if functions are outsourced, the company must make sure that the staff at the other, contracted organization have the needed skills. The organization itself must also have the structure and capabilities (resources) to execute the strategy. This will differ between industries (some industries require a more hierarchical structure while others may benefit from more fluid arrangements) and the complexity of the strategy being executed but there must be a plan to deploy such needed resources.
After these starting-points are confirmed, then and only then can the organization begin to allocate its existing resources to execute the strategy and ensure that its policies support such strategy. Resource allocation is another component which cannot be significantly ignored or altered. The economic concept of opportunity cost is relevant here; organizations do not have infinite resources and must make intelligent choices about how those resources are used. Similarly, without careful review, organizational policies can prove to be significant obstacles in realizing organizational goals.
Process value assessment and best practices then follow as the organization determines how to ensure that the organization sets goals for itself that can be achieved and that it is continually improving in pursuit of those goals. This underlines the fact that what cannot be measured cannot be achieved in business and without this phase the organization, while it may be able to set a vague vision statement for itself, will not achieve a measurable benchmark, which is ultimately the goal of every strategy. Information and operating systems ensure a continuous flow of feedback of information that allows personnel to know if they are achieving the defined benchmarks set by the organization. Again, if something cannot be measured, it cannot be determined to have been achieved. If there is a failure in reaching such benchmarks, the organization must reevaluate its methods and determine why.
Given the critical role of personnel in achieving objectives, employees who make the needed strategy happen must be appropriately rewarded and given the right types of incentives (both tangible and intangible) to do so. In short, the organization must show a combination of being able to “make things happen” and “make things happen right” (Thompson et al. xi). The organization must be able to know and understand the direction in which it wishes to move forward and control the direction in which it moves forward to avoid missteps and miscalculations. In short, organizations cannot deviate from any of the steps of executing strategy. Even though individual steps may look different for different organizations, this does not mean that steps can be ignored. Without a clear strategy and a practical and feasible plan to achieve it, the organization will go nowhere. Even if organizations by chance do survive or briefly thrive without making a demonstrable commitment to strategy, this will simply not be sustainable in the long term.


Work Cited
Thompson, Arthur A., Peteraf, Margaret A., Gamble, John E., & Stricklannd, A.J., Crafting
& Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases (20th
ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.