In a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in March 2013 of 587 senior executives globally, 88% say executing strategic initiatives successfully will be “essential” or “very important” for their organisations’ competitiveness over the next three years. However, 61% acknowledge that their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation. Only 56% say that their strategic initiatives have been successful.
The study also identified the barriers towards successful strategy implementation and included the following:
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Lack of skills particularly change management skills and project management skills
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Initiatives are poorly resourced
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Poor communication of overall strategy
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Poor communication surrounding initiative/project
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Lack of executive sponsorship and support
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Strategy occurs in a vacuum with little effort to implement it practically
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Initiatives to implement strategy are poorly thought out/designed
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Strategy is not well thought out in the first place
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Projects to implement strategy are not aligned to the organisation’s strategy
This article was first published in Print Singapore Issue #006/2015, a bi-monthly publication of the Print & Media Association.
Author: Jacqueline Gwee, Director, aAdvantage Consulting
Jacqueline has had over 25 years of broad-based human resource, change management and business excellence consulting experience in both the public and private sectors. She leads the Research & Insights, Business Excellence & Human Resources solution areas within aAdvantage Consulting. She has worked with clients from a range of industries including property, banking & finance, software development, electronic manufacturing, trading, chemicals, government services, healthcare and construction & engineering.
Her areas of consulting experience include organisational reviews, design and conduct of organisational and public perception surveys, compensation and benefits advice, job evaluation and performance management systems, executive search & selection, organisational development, corporate restructuring, change management and career & outplacement counselling.