WHY STRATEGY EXECUTION UNRAVELS –

and What to Do About It

CORPORATE STRATEGY
AND IMPLEMENTATION

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 Table of Contents

Q1. Refer to problem #1 of 5 as to why Strategy Execution fails: "Focusing just on

cascading objectives down the hierarchy does not work!".

Q1A. From your experiences, please suggest some reasons (in particular contexts)
as to why cascading objectives down the hierarchy does not work?

Q1B. Why do members in other units behaved abominably and ignore requests from
a sister unit to do their part?

Q2. Refer to Problems underlying strategy execution: Problem #5 of 5. “A heroic

CEO may end up micromanaging, thereby emasculating the middle management,
while the CEO becomes a bottleneck for all decisions!” Explain how the antidotes
to deal with this situation is to materialize.

Q2A. What is to be done to materialize "Execution needs to be driven from the

middle by distributed leaders, guided by the top management (whatever “guidance”
is supposed to mean)"?

Q2B. What different things will employees need to do (or what things various levels
of employees need to do differently) in order to " focus on what is best for the company
(and not their own agendas) " while they are already deployed in maximizing
shareholder wealth?

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Q1. Refer to problem #1 of 5 as to why Strategy Execution fails: "Focusing just on cascading
objectives down the hierarchy does not work!"
Q1A. From your experiences, please suggest some reasons (in particular contexts) as to why
cascading objectives down the hierarchy does not work.

Team’s insights:

Objectives are purpose statements that help create an overall vision and set goals and
measurable steps for an organization to achieve the desired outcome. These steps are then
cascaded or passed down the hierarchy to get quantifiable work done within an organization.
It is said that this cascading renders alignment which gets everyone, associated to the
organization, going in the desired direction.

But there are some definite downsides to this cascading:

● Difficulty in staying close to reality

Top Management might not understand the granularity of actual work and may set up goals
that are not closer to reality.

Setting up configuration for a sub-process.

Doing feasibility analysis and communicating
Actual Tasks in a results.
project Building as per specification.
Creating documentation.

Actual Goals/ Time Delivery

Objectives for Miniscule defects on delivery
assessment

In reality, the steps needed for task completion might not relate completely to the actual
parameters of the assessment. Thus, even after following the right path, practitioners are
unable to justify the quantum of time taken to finish their tasks.

For example, in our project, the above were four steps (on a high level) required to complete
object A. Now, an employee picks up this object for completion and does configuration as
per step 1 but due to pressure to achieve “On-time delivery” starts building as per
specification with little feasibility check and completes documentation.

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Had there been a more realistic goal defined say “On-time risk reporting” or “Suggesting
alternatives”, it would have been easy for someone to incur additional time in feasibility
checks and subsequent reporting, proper communication which would reduce the defects at a
later stage. Hence, in this case, the cascading would not work.

● Ambiguous goals in the divisional reporting models

It may happen that, in scenarios where-in, there is dual reporting or the hierarchy enforces an
individual to report to two managers, one from the functional end and the other from the
project management end, goals may be paradoxical or contradictory.

To illustrate, in a project XX with stringent timelines and at peak of the development phase,
usually the functional was expected to provide a quick working solution from their respective
managers but the same thing was censured by the project managers as it did not follow the
best practices or guidelines from the technical front.

Functional Manager Project Manager

No, this is not as per coding
Apply this logic, we are
guidelines. We can't hit the
missing timelines
quality.

Hence, both the functional Head and the project manager were diligent in propagating the
right set of objectives to their respective teams, but, since they were working towards their
individual goals more in silos, the cascading failed to address the broader objective of the
organization. So, for scenarios these, passing objectives down would not help. Rather, a more
workable approach or goal would be set with proper communication between individuals
performing the real tasks and their managers.

● Hinders the sense of freedom

When goals are enforced by higher authorities, a sense of freedom for individuals is
compromised. On the contrary, if goals are set based on internal discussion between

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managers and their reportee, the reportee develops a sense of ownership and thinks about
how his role contributes toward the bigger goal of the firm. In the latter case, the prospects of
achieving the goals are higher.

We have seen this in our organization. Previously, we used to fill the goal sheet from a pre-
existing set of goals imposed on us by our higher officials. Later this model was replaced by
the RPM model where-in, check-in discussions were held at the start of the year between the
manager and the individual, to set the expectations clear.

● Missing link with performance management

One mistake that causes cascading goals to fail, is when organizations don’t incorporate the
cascading goals into performance management. If an organization is changing its objectives,
the same should be reflected in its performance model.

The alignment of strategies in a business is important to ensure that everybody is pulling in

the same direction. Strategies are the offshoot of business goals and direction and are
designed to give an indication to all members of the business of how the business will
achieve its goals. Strategies must work together to be most effective. If people are pulling in
different directions, resources will be wasted.

● Vertical Alignment

A company's goals and objectives will drive its strategies. Vertical alignment of strategies
will ensure that strategies are related directly to goals that are related directly to the
organization's mission, vision, and values. Strategies are developed to indicate "how" a
company will achieve its goals and objectives. Companies generally have several strategies
that they put in place to meet multiple goals and objectives. Importantly, these strategies must
be aligned to ensure that resources are used effectively and that success can be achieved.

● Horizontal Alignment

Horizontal alignment of strategies ensures that all strategies work together and are not in
competition. A healthcare organization with one strategy to "decrease the length of hospital
stays" and another to "reduce the number of hospital readmissions" might have strategies that
are in competition with each other. When establishing business strategies, companies need to
look at the big picture to ensure that strategies in one part of the organization are not
inadvertently and inappropriately impacting the ability to achieve strategies in another part of
the organization.

Advantages of horizontal and vertical integration of objectives:

● Room for creativity

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 The horizontal goal cascading provides your teams with an abundance of
opportunities to give their input and suggestions. Being a collaborative approach, it
facilitates the room for brainstorming, feedback, and constructive feedback that
navigates the organization to better outcomes.

● More informed decisions

In such a collaborative framework, the employees that work directly on projects and
oversee the project management can communicate the decisions that will impact their
future work. As your team leaders work directly with the team members to chart a
course of action, it fends off the potential blind spots that could otherwise appear if
decisions were taken without team input.

● Better morale

The horizontal approach encourages greater buy-in from the team members as each of
your employees will be given the prospect to influence the decisions regardless of
their seniority. This also fosters better relationships between colleagues by offering
members of all levels a fair chance to impact the outcomes.

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Q1B. Why do members in other units behave abominably and ignore requests from a sister
unit to do their part?

Team’s insights:

● Cross-functional Collaboration:

Members in different units when usually collaborate on a common project or a goal, and a
cross-functional team is formed. Collaboration is essential when organizations are looking to
break down silos and work alongside departments instead of against each other.

But such collaboration is hard to pull off without a lot of hard work and there are multiple
roadblocks to deal with, ensuring that this collaboration is productive and effectively creates
a more enjoyable workplace.

● Ineffective Goal setting:

All the units have their own clear objectives, but when collaborating, those goals don’t
always overlap well. Each team chases its own metric which doesn’t always result in the
common good. Usually, the task assigned in cross-boundary teams is seen as secondary to
meeting the goals for one’s own unit as a cross-functional project’s success or failure is not
included primarily in compensation and performance reviews of the people who work on or
lead teams.

● Skewed Dynamics and its impact:

Also, many departments are not much aware of what other teams do and they don’t have a
clear idea about the responsibilities of other teams either. Different units work in dark
corners, handling only a portion of the project that has been assigned to them and hence are
missing out on the vision of the big picture. This results in microaggressions, animosity, and
ambivalence towards other teams. Hence, being able to gain the support of team members
over whom you have no direct authority and communicating effectively is one of the biggest
challenges these teams face. Especially in case of friction, cross-functional team structure for
integrating value-creating activities either does not exist or is flawed, and the lack of honest,
collective, and public conversation prevents the organization from recognizing and correcting
those flaws.

● Less clarity in Roles and responsibilities:

Moreover, the roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined in cross-functional teams. So
even when most of the team members can foresee the failure of the project, no one is usually
willing to go to the management to ask them to pull the plug and redeploy them to their
respective departments.

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 ● Leadership involvement and meeting efficacy:

Ideally, there should be one end-to-end accountable leader overseeing each function, and one
end-to-end accountable leader overseeing it. One of the biggest roles for these leaders is to set
the context of the meetings to stimulate discussion in the right direction so as to foster
collaboration. Meetings are a great way to make sure everyone knows the latest data and is
aware of the current status and risks along with a mitigation plan. But when the agenda of the
meeting isn’t set, or not everyone is allowed to participate equally, they end up making
everyone bitter. Along with that, the other most common breakdown in cross-functional
teams is people prioritizing their own functional meetings over these project meetings. That’s
exactly when the need arises for an accountable leader and empower a decision-making
substitute. For example, at IBM Global Services, there are occasions when mid-level
managers step in with the authority to make decisions and they also serve as the first line of
defense for cross-functional escalation issues.

● Ineffective progress monitoring:

KPIs are established so as to ease the process of progress monitoring. But in the case of
cross-functional teams, even if we set KPIs for that project, the members will prioritize their
own KPIs most of the time. Some team members might drop their responsibilities or not be
willing to help others because they are focused on their own metrics.

Another issue, in this case, is that the tracking of these metrics may not be happening on a
common platform; everyone might be tracking their goals in separate spreadsheets or
applications, which makes it very difficult to estimate the actual progress of the project on a
real-time basis. It might also make it very hard to pinpoint the pain area and the bottlenecks
and thus unnecessary efforts will have to be made to identify and rectify the issues since even
responsibilities are not very clear.

● Difficulties in building trust across units:

Even in their own units many employees are afraid to own up to their mistakes or ask their
managers or colleagues for a helping hand. One of the main reasons for this is because most
of them happen to think that doing so leaves them vulnerable to criticism and judgment. This
fear is probably amplified when collaborating with cross-functional team members. Also,
without trust, it’s difficult to diagnose the root cause of workflow issues or determine the best
solution. But on the other hand, it is very tricky and difficult to foster an environment of trust
that encourages team members to acknowledge their shortcomings and in turn effectively
collaborate and work towards finding an optimum solution that too without pointing fingers
or shifting blame; which also requires managers’s commitment. Same was aslo evident in the
article “10 Strategies To Build A Successful Cross-Functional Team- Serena Miller”.

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 ● Improper conflict management:

When trust-building activity itself fails, team members' confidence in their ability to solve
problems without risking their professional status or standing within the organization reduces
drastically. Due to this, they avoid conflict altogether instead of feeling free to express their
concerns, admit to their errors, or offer potential solutions which in turn widens the gap
between teams and leads to more conflicts and distrust.

● A performance driven culture:

A culture which is driven only by performance often neglects the attributes of agility,
teamwork and ambition. The most pressing problem with many corporate cultures is that they
fail to foster coordination, which is essential to execution. When it comes to hires,
promotions, and non-financial recognition, past performance is twice or thrice more likely to
be rewarded than a track record of collaboration. Performance is critical, of course, but if it
comes at the expense of coordination, it can undermine execution.

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Q2. Refer to Problems underlying strategy execution: Problem #5 of 5. “A heroic CEO may
end up micromanaging, thereby emasculating the middle management, while the CEO
becomes a bottleneck for all decisions!” Explain how the antidotes to deal with this situation
are to materialize.
Q2A. What is to be done to materialize "Execution needs to be driven from the middle by
distributed leaders, guided by the top management (whatever “guidance” is supposed to
mean)"

Team’s insights:

It is true that micromanaging has several downsides such as:

● Compromising job satisfaction of employees

● Low employee trust and loyalty
● Low employee engagement

All this would eventually build a toxic work environment. Although micromanaging is time-
consuming for the top management, it often keeps them occupied in their team’s tasks rather
than their own. This leads to delays in meeting their deadlines thus becoming a bottleneck in
the decision-making hierarchy.

When discussed within our group, all 5 members truly believe that it is not just the
responsibility of the top management to take an organization from good to great, but
Managers also have a dominant role to play. While top management has to create
opportunities, it is important for Managers to identify instances, and demonstrate an
unwavering attitude to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no
matter how difficult it is to create and adapt to new ways of working. Some of the suggested
instances that a Manager (also referred to as a mid-management team) could follow are:

a) Seek out the new: Falling back into routine activities and following a pre-defined
checklist of tasks is very easy, but not effective or productive. Middle managers must
encourage a culture to break away from routines and traditions, to find inspiration.
This could also mean that middle managers have to introduce employees to things,
activities, and strategies that aren’t directly evident and related to the
project/organization.

b) Encourage constructive dissent: As managers or as top management leaders

(including CEOs) who are inclined to the habit of micromanaging, they often focus on
just one perspective, and generally their own. Whether it’s in break-out-area
conversations or meeting room discussions, they often seek out the opinions
of people who have something similar to offer. This leads to a habit of steering some
conflict thoughts or encouraging disagreements between them and their
teammates. This culture, if identified, has to be changed to encourage
disagreements, leading to engaging in healthy debate and conversations.

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c) Open Conversations, rather than closing them: Instead of criticizing a junior resource
for sharing their thoughts and speaking their perspective, the managers and leaders
will have to start their sentence by “yes, and…” rather than “yes, but…”. This
encourages a collaborative attitude and builds trust among the team members and
leaders.

d) Identify freedom in limitations: When there is a culture of micromanaging, the

employees think they can’t innovate because the parameters of their job/projects and
the perspectives of their seniors are too constrained. Rather than micromanaging,
Managers should build values & habits where constraints don’t hold the employees
back but become a platform the employees can use to think creatively about the
situation.

e) Lead from the trenches: Often there are situations and circumstances in teams, where
the employees are given tasks and roles that Managers wouldn't expect employees
would take. This could be to balance the workload among all employees in a team or
to accommodate a sensitive timeline. However, delegating a task and having a
rigorous follow-up impacts the productivity of the employees. Building an
environment where the Manager shows how to initiate the first few steps, guide the
path ahead and help visualize the deadline would be a beneficial outcome for the
organization.

f) Foster and cheer happy accidents: In the organizational hierarchy having a heritage of
micromanaging, leaders often believe that success depends on hierarchical command
and control. This cultivates an environment where the employees and managers both
stop taking decisions and thus, heavily depend on the top management to guide the
way forward. In large organizations, where delays in decision-making could have a

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 multifold impact on various areas (revenue, profits, delay in closure of activities, long
follow-ups, etc). Hence, this is not only the responsibility of the top management, but
also the responsibility of the Managers to ensure only key decisions are driven by the
top management, and all other activities and operations are led by the Managers, with
the guidance of the top management.

Post implementing the above-suggested ways, some of the key observations that the group
members noticed in their teams were:

● An increase in cooperation when the roles of individual team members are sharply
defined yet the team is given latitude on how to achieve the task. This was a key issue
between the product development team, the product UI design team, and the product
testing team. Due to multiple overlaps of responsibilities, it was imperative that each
team’s roles were clearly defined and ambiguity in tasks was understood
● Managers who were both task-based and relationship-oriented were more successful
than Managers with just either one or none of the two qualities. One of the learnings
was that leaning more heavily on a task orientation at the outset of a project and
shifting towards a relationship orientation once the work is in full swing world best
for the Managers.

When the culture (as described above) and way of working (as showcased in personal
instances above) gets imbibed in an organization, the need/want for micromanagement
gradually reduces. This becomes a continuous cycle of improvement complemented by the
employee feedback system being incorporated. Feedback systems help to keep a check on
what works and what needs improvement/change. Lastly, when the top management and
managers demonstrate highly collaborative behavior themselves, employees/team members
collaborate well too.

To conclude, when people feel a strong sense of community, they feel more comfortable
reaching out to others, more likely to share knowledge, generally ready to give more than
100%, and most important of all, they are mostly self-motivated. This makes high productive
contributions of each employee through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.
Changing the organization from within can start by empowering employees. The Managers,
as a start, should monitor their words and behaviours carefully to be attuned to their
audiences and to enroll their colleagues and teammates.

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Q2B. What different things will employees need to do (or what things various levels of
employees need to do differently) in order to " focus on what is best for the company (and not
their own agendas) " while they are already deployed in maximizing shareholder wealth?

Team’s insights:

Employees are the engine that drives productivity and results. Strategic implementation
processes require the work and attention of employees and managers at all levels within a
business when the changes occur in a small or a large business environment. Because the
implementation process has the potential to impact a wide range of duties and
responsibilities, employees need to have a thorough understanding of their responsibilities
during the process and afterward.

● Strategic Implementation

Strategic implementation involves planning and executing strategies related to process

changes. In businesses of all sizes, this type of implementation helps ensure that changes
occur appropriately across all departments and teams within the company. On both a macro
level, which involves the entire organization and a micro level, which focuses on each
individual within the organization, change needs to be well-thought-out and communicated
effectively to be successful.

● Job Impact

For strategic implementation to be successful, all employees must understand the changes
that will, directly and indirectly, affect their job duties and responsibilities. Employees need
to understand which duties and responsibilities will continue as normal and which ones will
change. As far as indirect changes, employees need to be aware of the changes occurring
throughout the organization and how that may impact their job function. For instance, a
change in reporting requirements in another department may require employees to provide
data differently. Meeting these new requirements is par for the course for all employees
during and after the implementation process.

● Communication

Keeping the lines of communication open is perhaps the most important role of employees
during the implementation process. This includes taking the time to voice concerns, seek out
answers and resolve any difficulties as changes are put in place. Staying in touch with
management and helping co-workers overcome obstacles will help make the implementation
process as simple and efficient as possible.

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 ● Considerations

Appointing implementation committees or change leaders to oversee the process will help
implement and secure process changes in the workplace. Change leaders set the example for
other employees and serve as a point of contact for employees when difficulties or concerns
arise. This serves two purposes. It allows employees to seek out help through an appropriate
channel, thus limiting rumours and reducing negative morale, and helps management garner
invaluable feedback on common concerns and difficulties as changes are implemented.

● Effective engagement:

As per the article “Increase Productivity at the Lowest Possible Cost- By Jake Herway”,
highly engaged teams are 14% more productive than teams with low engagement, but if
employees are hesitant to commit to a common goal, they’ll find it hard to remain engaged.

There can be multiple reasons for this hesitance; it might be due to general despair in the
team which leads to the members feeling as though their individual opinions and priorities
don’t matter or that there’s a lack of strategic direction within the team. In such cases, unit
members feel it difficult to align themselves with team decisions, especially when that team
doesn’t know how to address conflict in a healthy way or needs myriad hour-long meetings to
settle on a single choice.

Each group member has had their personal experiences that led us to derive the above
suggestions for a way forward. Some of these instances were:

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● In a team of 5 junior associates, all were high on energy and enthusiasm to make an
impact on every task they picked up. Thus, the Manager had two key challenges:

○ Continuous appreciation
○ Evaluation parameters for all associates

As the first appraisal cycle was halfway through, it was important for the Manager to
identify the best way to handle this. On reading, evaluating, and understanding
various industry and organizational best practices, she came up with a solution to
bring in the concept of ‘Firm Initiatives’. A Firm Initiative is an initiative taken by the
associate to showcase, build or conceptualize an idea that can be materialized by the
larger team in the organization and build a new solution/service offering. It also meant
that, if there are Firm Initiatives driven by the Senior Associates or other Managers,
then the junior associates could participate in those to contribute at an individual
level. The final addition was to add this parameter in the performance evaluation.

Although two of the five junior associates performed exceptionally well, the other 5
understood the importance of continuous learning, not just in their area of expertise
but also in other fields and areas that indirectly contributed to the project.

● Keeping a time check of employee check-in and check-out in the office was a
common practice before the pandemic. But as we all saw, during the pandemic, the
new ‘Work-from-home’ culture took over by storm. A common observation noticed
within the office was that employees worked more during work-from-home than what
they did when they were in the office during regular working hours.

However, in late 2021, when the hybrid culture was slowly picking up, the Manager
decided to ensure that the punch-in system would have to be removed. This idea was
presented to the top management and explained that continuing the same tradition
would:

○ Continue to build transactional-connect rather than relationship-based connect

○ Diminish workforce morale as employees would feel pressured to work only
in the given time slot and not beyond that
○ Reduce employee participation punch-in system would reduce the flexibility
of working hours

Well, the idea was not welcomed at first, but after several rounds of to-and-fro
discussions, it was accepted to try it as an experiment for 6 months. This was an
achievement as the organization did not feel comfortable changing habits and policies,
as it had a very heavy heritage and legacy on organizational governance.

Looking back at it now, the Managers and top management feel that the decision was
worth it and are seeing fruitful results. The employee satisfaction and productivity of
multiple teams have increased, and most importantly, employee collaboration had a
positive impact.

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Reference: “Employee involvement climate and organizational effectiveness” by Riordan, C.
M., Vandenberg, R. J., & Richardson, H. A. (2005).

END OF DOCUMENT

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