STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION BY HUMAN RESOURCES

The HR department has proven itself especially useful in the innovative development of
organizational strategy. The time has come, however, for Human Resource professionals to push
past the strategy-development phase and put their plans into action. The implementation of
strategy is a key element of business success, and HR authorities are uniquely positioned to
pioneer the realization of such strategies. Unlike any other constituent of an organization, Human
Resources is extensive, inter-departmental, and involved throughout the company; the nature of
HR is to interact with and understand the processes of the business as a whole. On the other
hand, the implementation of a business strategy intrinsically demands cooperation with the
human workforce. And, the specific arsenal of skills necessary for strategy implementation is
native to those people working in HR.

Strategy, in order to be effective, must naturally be implemented. If a business needs to

change, people must drive the wheels of that change—and that is where HR’s true role emerges.
Honing in on a successful method of strategy implementation, of course, can be a difficult and
often overwhelming task. Even HR professionals at the forefront of their field can find
themselves well out of their depth when it comes to actually putting the vehicle of strategy into
gear. HR can and should be a leading factor in the implementation of strategy. . Regardless of an
organization’s size, function, or ambition, certain essential steps should be taken as part of the
implementation process.

Before HR professionals can work to implement strategy, they must first ascertain what
obstacles presently exist to prevent the desired changes from occurring in their organization.
Strategy implementation is, in many ways, a systematized process of removing the company’s
many internal roadblocks to change. Every strategy will encounter some measure of resistance,
even when it’s been unanimously agreed that change is imperative; and the more dramatic the
change in strategy, of course, the more struggle there will be. HR can preempt many potential
battles by anticipating and addressing some of the problems that will likely arise. As a general
rule of thumb, there are five basic causes for strategy implementation failure, and from these
causes stem ten or so foreseeable hurdles that HR management must endeavor to overcome. The
core causes and their related issues are as follows:

1. Poor Coordination within Management

 Incongruous goals, opinions, and policies among upper-level executives can obstruct the
cross-system cooperation required by the strategy.

2. Employees Aren’t Buying In

 Employees within the company do not understand the strategy.

 Employees feel no personal responsibility to fulfill the strategy. It’s possible they may
feel that their efforts will be inconsequential in actually bringing about a change, or
perhaps they are contemptuous of management.
 Employees are impassive towards the execution of the strategy, and exert no enthusiasm
in taking part.
  Employees are uninspired by the overarching goals of the strategy.

3. Inadequate Change within the Work Unit

 Managers fail to direct the efforts of their work units toward conforming with the new
strategy.
 Managers’ styles and tactics undermine employee enthusiasm about the strategy.
 Work proceeds as usual even within those units which the strategy requires to exhibit
swift and considerable change.

4. Weak Inter-Departmental Collaboration

 There are insufficient processes employed to advance the collaboration between different
operating and functional areas.

5. There Exists No Measurement of Progress

 A method of measuring progress toward the desired goals is either deficient or else
entirely absent. It is difficult, if not impossible, to tell what exactly is changing.

The most crucial element to solving these kinds of internal company issues is to identify them
from the start. Like any disease left undiagnosed, small discrepancies in communication and
leadership can rankle deeply and result in long-term and potentially devastating problems. In
order to effectively implement strategy, HR leaders must take a proactive role in seeking out and
carefully eradicating these various obstacles to change.

STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AS A SOCIAL ISSUE

The most significant aspect of the “obstacle course” listed above is the fact that it consists
predominantly of not technical or financial system flaws, but rather, stumbling blocks within the
human system. This, of course, is HR’s happy realm of specialty – for, where there is discord in
the human resource; there is work for Human Resource professionals. The art of strategy
implementation is a symphony in three parts: the technical system, the business system, and the
social system. The majority of management teams do a swell job of dovetailing their business
processes with the newly established strategy, and the benefits of cutting-edge technology
typically fall into place – but the marriage of social system and strategy is far too often a rocky
one. The human resource is fickle and complex, difficult to understand and, as a consequence,
difficult to successfully manage. By working to improve human interactions, HR will, by
extension, be working to improve the actual execution and use of the more straightforward
technology and business processes.

Social issues, when left to fester, can grow to the unfortunate point of overshadowing
otherwise superior efforts by the remaining two fields. Put simply: the best technology money
can buy and that paragon of a business plan are meaningless without the right people to operate
them. HR professionals, therefore, become indispensable in their roles of mediating social issues
and building up a support force to help drive the strategy implementation. That formidable string
of issues listed up yonder ways can be pared down to yield a tidy little “To-Do” list – but
recognizing problems and tackling problems are two very different things. The chore of
thoroughly managing barriers to strategy is an intimidating one, and given that, the rarity of
effective strategy execution is really none too surprising. Fortunately, every one of those issues is
within the power of HR to conquer. From a big-picture perspective, there are four vital tasks that
all businesses must accomplish. These four jobs, when properly fulfilled, add up to the bare-
bones work of strategy implementation, and they are:

1. Helping employees to understand the strategy.

Not only must employees understand the strategic direction itself, they must also comprehend the
reason for the strategy, as well as the driving forces behind it. Employees are the cogs around
which the gears of business turn. If the employees don’t understand where the strategy is headed,
they will be incapable of realizing their full potential in aiding the strategy implementation.

2. Augmenting employee commitment to the strategy.

Changes in strategy mean changes for people on an individual level, and individual change tends
to mean frustration, disappointment, and challenge. If an employee is going to put in any extra
effort toward propelling a conceived strategy to fruition, he must genuinely believe that, in the
long run, the end product will be worth the difficult sacrifices made in order to implement the
strategy.

3. Streamlining local effort with the strategy.

Though invariably all employees must be on board for understanding and committing to the
strategy, this in and of itself is not enough. Implementing a strategy means legitimately changing
work production. In order to achieve the business strategy, all off-strategy work must terminate
and all on-strategy work must proceed with renewed urgency and dedication.

4. Inducing cross-system cooperation.

The final and most important step in strategy implementation is that of realigning departmental
relationships within the system. Implementing strategy means carving deeper relationships
between inter-dependent organizational units, such as sales and manufacturing, or customer
service and distribution. This last job is as challenging as it is critical, because it demands that
employees within discrete work units learn to share and interact across the traditional boundaries
of their job descriptions.
THE REAL ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCES

Having established that these four jobs form the core work of strategy implementation,
the question now remains: exactly whose work is it? Certainly HR has a necessary role in
helping the business to address each of these jobs, but it is not the place of HR to carry them all
out. HR should follow its own initiative to complete those tasks it can, and a solid partnership
with the executive line will see to the rest. Put simply, HR must establish itself as the driving
force behind the strategy implementation effort. Employees, in all honesty, would rather be
lectured and inspired by line leaders than they would by HR. HR, meanwhile, has the power to
generate opportunities to bring employees together with managers and executives, leading from
behind the scenes.

Management will have the greatest success in implementing strategy given a:

 Thorough understanding of the strategic objectives

 Willingness to make sacrifices in order to achieve the strategy
 Common view regarding what parts of the organization must change
 Commitment to a systematic plan of employee management, support, and inter-
departmental relations that will cultivate efficient execution of the strategy

If any of these elements are deficient, it is the job of HR professionals to urge the
management group to address these issues and suggest means of bringing the group into greater
accord. HR professionals can and should be an extraordinarily valuable asset to every
organization, and when working to the full extent of their capabilities, they are more than
qualified to set the wheels of legitimate strategy implementation in motion.