Successful Strategic Execution Is Hard

Successful strategic execution is hard to achieve because of five key reasons (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009):

1. Relentless pressure from shareholders for greater profits. This forces top business leaders to redefine their strategy more often.
2. Increased complexity of organizations. For example, the activities it requires to create products and services span various functional, organization, and even geographical boundaries.
3. Balancing demands of executing complex change programs with business performance. In particular, in cases where management is tied to rewards based on performance, it can be difficult to get buy-in into creating strategic plans for the future.
4. Low levels of involvement of managers at the beginning stages of strategic execution.
5. Difficulty securing the required resources to execute the strategy. As a result of the large number of concurrent change programs, many of the company's resources will already be allocated and even if they are available, managers will aggressively compete for them.

Reference

Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing strategic change: Understanding the critical management elements that lead to success. California Management Review, 51(3), 49-72.

Thanks to Steve Nguyen  / WorkplacePsychology