MIT Sloan Management Review

Corporate Strategy, Leadership and Organizational Studies

 

The Silent Killers of Strategy Implementation and Learning

By Michael Beer and Russell A. Eisenstat

July 15, 2000

Six silent killers of strategy implementation exist in most companies, but too many managers avoid confronting them. Leaders need to face these killers if they and their organizations are to learn and succeed.

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Doctors call high cholesterol a “silent killer” because it blocks arteries with no outward symptoms. Companies, too, have silent killers working below the surface — mutually reinforcing barriers that block strategy implementation and organizational learning. The silent killers can be overcome, but first leaders must engage people throughout their organizations in an honest conversation about the barriers and their underlying causes.

Companies have long known that, to be competitive, they must develop a good strategy and then appropriately realign structure, systems, leadership behavior, human resource policies, culture, values and management processes.1 Easier said than done. Between the ideal of strategic alignment and the reality of implementation lie many difficulties.

For one thing, senior managers get lulled into believing that a well-conceived strategy communicated to the organization equals implementation. For another, they approach change in a narrow, nonsystemic and programmatic manner that does not address root causes.

We began our research on strategy implementation when CEO Ray Gilmartin and chief strategy officer Ralph Biggadike of Becton Dickinson recognized that perfectly sound strategies were not easily implemented.2 Nowhere was the challenge more evident than in their global strategy. As is often the case, good intentions embodied in a new structure were not sufficient to change behavior.3 Teams created to enact strategies across... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

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