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Strategic planning may be the prerogative of upper levels of management, but implementation percolates down to front level managers responsible to carryout operations efficiently, influencing the experience of customers, or carrying out improvements which are important in the long run. Hence communication and role clarity are of paramount importance.

Communication is very important as implementation involves many more people working for seemingly unrelated processes but with the same end goal. Strategy deployment is generally seen as a function of processes and structures but the fact is that it is as much a function of voluntary involvement and spirit of the people in the organization. It is this aspect of strategy deployment that differentiates two companies pursuing similar strategy. Spirit of the people is something that cannot be imitated by the competitors and is a decisive factor between success and failure of execution.

Organizational culture (information sharing, amenable to change, ownership etc.) is the crucial factor which determines how quickly or how readily the people can adapt to the new demands that deployment of strategy may make on them. Commitment of the people can be ensured through clear communication of strategy and individual role in fulfillment of the same. This is the gap which is filled by strategy maps. Aligning individual aspiration with the strategic goals of the company through judiciously designed reward schemes, monitory incentives, well thought out support to individual to plan their career, and stimulating their intellectual faculties with challenging responsibilities are some of the things that can be done to ensure high levels of commitment from the people who make the strategy work. Organizational culture of trust and empowerment are bare necessities for effective execution of the strategy through informed and quick decisions.

Open discussions, where learning is the objective rather than the blame for failures during the progress review sessions can always help in identifying where the things went wrong, and how the course can be corrected – fact finding rather than fault finding helps in fine tuning strategies. It is through such close monitoring in an open environment that may ensure a correction in execution and as well as plans.

Leaders must always emphasize the importance of the strategy through out the execution phase and follow up through rigorous reviews, so that the managers know that they are contributing to an important task. One problem is managers take pride in planning and execution is one thing that is always thought of as a lower level job in the hierarchy. Execution is something which is taken for granted. More so in the case of implementing strategy, leading measures are never agreed upon in advance and hence what gets measured and reviewed is lagging indicators, which hampers the ability of the firm to effectively monitor the execution of the strategy for corrective actions to be taken proactively. BSC, strategy maps and KPI charts are some of the means available for companies to monitor lead indicators for the factors that drive strategy fulfillment.

In short communication along with rigorous review is the key to efficient execution of strategy.

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