The process of strategy implementation is a very important one for any company. This process deals with the long term goals of an organization and how to accomplish them. Strategy implementation turns an organization’s strategy into action, with an aim to achieve targets.
However, the strategy implementation process has two different dimensions. Human aspects of strategy implementation and the process of doing it. While the process of strategy implementation is the one we focus more on, we often ignore the human aspects of it.
In this article, we will take you through the guide to strategy implementation and show you the human part of it along the way. So let’s get to it!
Human Aspects of Strategy Implementation and How It Works
Strategy Implementation is a process of executing plans and strategies, with an aim to accomplish the long-term goals of an organization. Strategy implementation turns strategies into specific actions, thus resulting in achieving company objectives.
It is important to keep in mind that the actions that a company decide to take, it depends not just on the system but also on the human side of the enterprise. The capability, support, and acceptance of the employees affect the success of any strategy. It is important that you get support, proper motivation, hard work from all levels of employees. Because without all of these combined, strategy implementation will never be possible.
Key To Strategy Implementation
There are key factors that drive the process of implementing a strategy. By ensuring that the key things are in place, you can easily implement a strategy.
People
The human aspects of strategy implementation deal with the people of an organization. It is the employees, who work towards the shared goal of implementing a strategy for their company. So managing the employees is one of the keys to strategy implementation.
We already know that, in order to make sure that we can properly implement a strategy, people are crucial. But two criteria must be fulfilled to get the best out of your people.
- You need to have sufficient people in your workforce to support your goals.
- The people in your workforce should be capable, or skillful enough to work for the goal you set for them.
While you can easily hire more employees to fill the gap, you need to keep something important on your mind while doing that. Are those people equipped with the necessary skills?
This is a question that will pretty much shape the way of your interview process and the role of your HR manager. While you should look for people with the required experience, another thing should also be your priority. Finding people, who will be with you in the long term. It is always important to have people who will believe in your goal and work sincerely towards a long-term strategy.
Available Resource Allocation
Resources are as important to strategy implementation as the bricks to a building. Without sufficient, continuous resource, all your efforts can go in vain. Resource management remains one of the crucial parts of strategy implementation. Two factors are important to ensure proper resource allocation –
- Available resource up for allocation.
- The non-existent resources that are required for strategy implementation.
As the continuous resource is needed for strategy implementation, you have to make sure that those resources exist. Meanwhile, you should also allocate resources in a proper way.
Organizational Structure
An organizational structure defines the function, responsibility, relationship, and communication of employees within a company. An organization with a clear-cut structure can achieve the company objective much more easily than an organization with a cluttered structure.
An organization should have a transparent structure, where any employee can communicate easily with his supervisor and vice versa. Proper communication between employees, management, and clear inter-department relationship makes for a well-achiever organization.
Company Culture
Company culture is another key factor for implementing strategies. Works get done faster in an organization where employees feel comfortable. A culture of being responsible for their own action is important for both reward and accountability.
The company cultures should be open and lively where everyone can stay motivated to do their task while they try to achieve a shared goal.
Related: 8 Proven Ideas for Building Company Culture in the Right Way
Tools
In this modern era, strategy and the digital system go hand in hand. You can use tools to handle many tasks in your company. As we’re concerned about the human aspects of strategy implementation, you should also keep in mind if the aid of the tool is in human benefit. You should be clear about the necessity of a tool and the way it aids the employees of your organization to make the strategy implementation process efficient.
There are many kinds of tools that are unnecessary and redundant. If you know what an ERP is, you already know that it can eliminate the need of using many of that software alone. A comprehensive ERP is the best choice to reduce pressure from your employees and achieve a faster pace of strategy implementation process.
Steps To Strategy Implementation From the Human Aspect
It’s always better to have a well-planned list of tasks that need to be done during the strategy implementation process. Now that we know the crucial factors that we should consider, let’s get to know the steps to strategy implementation.
1. Analyzing the Plan
After you formulated the plan, you’ll have to assign specific tasks to every employee of your organization. However, before you start doing that, analyze the plan again, and see if you need any improvement or not.
There are three major things that you have to ensure during this stage:
- Find out if there is any loophole in the plan and if all the individual objectives are headed towards implementing the strategy of your company.
- Make sure that you have enough budget to support and drive your organization to the objective.
- Every employee should have a clear idea of what to expect of them.
2. Finalizing the Plan
In this step, you will have to create a foundation for the strategy implementation process. Below are the things that should be done in this step –
- Create a road map for the procedure for individual and department-wise task implementation.
- Communicate with all the managers regarding the department-wise tasks and responsibilities.
- Assign the tasks to respective employees of every department.
- Make sure all the employees are clear about the goals and what is required to attain them.
3. Managing & Monitoring The Implementation Process
Strategy implementation is a process that needs constant monitoring. You should ensure following things to make sure the processing is on the right track.
- Create an employee performance tracking system. Also, determine a metric to evaluate the performance of your employees. By monitoring your employees and make sure everything is going according to the road map that has been created.
- Create a reward-based performance management system for your employees. It will motivate them and make the process faster as well.
- Make sure that the employees can reach out to their supervisors whenever they have trouble understanding anything or needs help to get a job done.
Related: Overcome Team Building Challenges To Handle Your Team Better
4. Carrying Out the Strategy Implementation Process
As soon as you have everything in place, you’re ready to go through with the process of implementing your strategy. Following are the day to day tasks that you’ll have to perform.
- Continue to supervise, motivate, and drive your employees to achieve company objectives.
- Evaluate department-wise and employee-wise performance.
- Modify your plan along the way to get better results.
Why Do Most Companies Fail To Implement a Strategy?
Despite making sure you have followed all the steps of strategy implementation and ensured all key factors are met many strategies simply fail!
So why do most companies fail to implement a strategy? Well, according to Business Insider, there are 12 reasons a strategy can fail. The key reasons for strategic failure are stated below –
- Overwhelming Strategic Plan & Unrealistic Goals – An overwhelming strategic plan can lessen the chance of achieving your goals. And if you set unrealistic objectives, chances of success become much lesser.
- Lack of Leadership & Inadequate Monitoring – In order to get the best out of employees, leadership plays a key role. Lack of leadership from supervisors and managers can eventually result in strategic failure. It’s important for the managers or leaders to understand the task, assign them to employees, and monitor the employees.
- Unclear Accountability – Employees should be clear about their roles and responsibilities. A work environment without accountability only results in failure of strategy.
- Lack of Motivation – Motivating all the employees to work for a single goal is not easy. It’s the manager’s and supervisor’s duty to ensure the employees are motivated enough and performing well.
- Lack of Communication – Lack of communication between employees and departments can be disastrous for a company. This is one of the biggest reasons for the failure of strategy implementation.
WP ERP – Your Trusted Companion for Strategy Implementation
WP ERP is a complete ERP system based on WordPress. It’s fast, easy, and powerful. It helps manage a company efficiently. If you think about the human aspects of strategy implementation, WP ERP can help dearly.
With its dedicated HRM, CRM, Accounting module, your process of implementing strategy becomes much easier.
Whether tracking the progress of your employees or creating new leads of customers, WP ERP can do wonder for you in every regard.
Getting started with WP ERP is absolutely free. But for advanced features, WP ERP offers a premium version.
Wrapping It All Up
Having a proper strategy increases your chance of being successful in the long run. However, success can never be achieved without trying and working hard to implement the strategy.
The process of implementing a strategy is a long and exhausting one from a human perspective. In order to sustain the process, in the long run, there are many things that you need to look out for, which we covered in this article so far.
If you want to take some pressure off your employees and make the strategy implementation process organized, you should definitely try using WP ERP.
