May 24, 2010
Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2010

Migration management: an approach for improving strategy implementation (published in Strategy & Leadership, November 2009)

ABSTRACT:
In today's business environment, the ability to rapidly rally the entire organization around its new strategy is more critical than ever. No one has any spare time or resource, and everyone needs to quickly get the benefits of their strategies. Nevertheless, few organizations have realized the full potential of their strategies although they had invested heavily to develop robust and attractive strategies. Apparently, some things are getting lost between strategy development and execution.

A key driver of the problem is that some corporations narrowly view strategy execution as redrawing the corporate organization chart and investing in new projects; however, an innovative and differentiated strategy that challenges conventional wisdom needs an unconventional implementation process as well. To get the full of benefit of the new strategy, start with a clear articulation of the "future state" - what a knowledgeable observer would write if asked to describe the successful company and its new competencies at the end of the strategy time horizon. From there, design the migration path, a roadmap for getting to the future state from the present.

By creating and properly using clear articulation of desired future identity and sequenced, interrelated paths of action programs within management processes oriented toward learning and adaptation, companies have been able to overcome the dilemmas and challenges associated with traditional approaches to strategy implementation.
SUBJECTS COVERED: Strategy Implementation Process, Experimentation, Leadership

by Gary Getz, Chris Jones and Pierre Loewe

Mass Device Staff