Strategy, Execution and Communication

"The key to delivering strategy is to assemble a balanced team and ensure that both conception and implementation are given the necessary resource."

That was the conclusion of Professor Eddie Obeng, director of Pentacle business school in the UK from their most recent research on strategy and execution, as reported in Management-Issues.

Some of their key findings:

• More than 80% of managers surveyed believed that too many projects failed to result in anything that improved the profitability of their business.
• More than three quarters of senior managers underestimated the stress of repeated initiatives or how much such a regime of "permanent revolution" could unnerve their staff.
• More than half of the managers also believed projects failed because of poor execution rather than in their conception.
• The most common reason for failure was poor communication, which was ranked highest with 73% seeing it as a regular cause of failure.

BOTTOMLINE: Our survey revealed that people are aware that communication of strategy is of the highest importance and senior management still need to step up to the challenge of being able to effectively disseminate the relevant parts of a strategy in the wider organization, in order to be able to deliver the projects they design."