Both the future of a company and the careers of its employees depend on how successfully they can implement a corporate strategy. Why, then, do employees often fail to execute corporate strategies? An interesting article on this topic was published by management consultant John Myrna on the Conference Board website. It summarised four basic reasons, based on Myrna's experience of working with executives. For your strategy to succeed, you need to overcome these four barriers.
1. Employees do not know what exactly you want them to do
Clear communication of expectations and priorities is fundamental. If managers only fire off ideas without any structure, their employees will lose track very quickly. Therefore, you should create a written strategic plan for your common work, including specific goals. It is important for everyone to know what is strategically important.
2. Employees do not want to execute your strategy
They ignore management because they think managers want them to do meaningless things. They are choosing priorities they themselves consider important for the company. In this case, it is necessary to align the strategy with corporate culture. Implementing a strategy may require a change in culture. Put simply, this means making employees understand why the strategy is meaningful.
3. Employees do not know how to execute your strategy
They know the goals, but do not know how to achieve them. Then you have to work with individual employees. There are three possible solutions: 1) offer coaching or create individual instructions to execute the corporate strategy; 2) require self-study or offer educational courses or on-the-job training; 3) assign responsibility for implementing the strategic goals to employees who know how to fulfil them.
4. Employees lack structure and a clear direction
Companies cannot expect employees automatically to keep their focus on strategy execution. Implementing a strategy is a constant process of assessing experience, commonly selecting procedures based on previous experience and proper application of the procedures in practice. It requires teamwork of managers and their staff.
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