The first management component of implementing strategy is building a capable organization (Implementing, 2004). This involves selecting the right people for key positions with the background, know-how, talent and personal chemistry, and developing skills, core competencies, managerial talents and competitive capabilities in these people through training, motivation, empowerment, and cooperative networking. Business processes must be organized, value chain activities established, and also decision-making processes to that strategy can be successfully executed.
The second component is the allocation of resources in a way that supports effective strategy execution, such as funding capital projects that can contribute to strategy implementation, funding efforts to strengthen competencies and capabilities and create new ones, shifting resources by downsizing some areas and upsizing others, killing activities which are no longer justified, and finding new activities that have a critical strategy role (Implementing, 2004).
Component three is creating strategy-supportive policies which channel behaviors and decisions to promote strategy execution and to counteract tendencies of people to resist chosen strategies (Implementing, 2004). The best policy is often a willingness to empower employees.
The fourth component is instituting the best practices for continuous improvement. Finding the best practices is integral to effective implementation (Implementing, 2004). Benchmarking spawns new approaches to improve strategy execution, and requires re-engineering to produce a good basic design which yields dramatic improvements, TQM to perfect the process by gradually improving efficiency and effectiveness, and continuous improvement programs.
The fifth component is installing support systems which are essential to promoting successful strategy execution (Implementing, 2004). Types of support systems include on-line data system...