Four key organizational hurdles to strategy execution

Managers face four organizational hurdles to strategy execution. One is cognitive: waking employees up to the need for a strategic shift. Red oceans may not be the paths to future profitable growth, but they feel comfortable to people and may have even served an organization well until now, so why rock the boat?

The second hurdle is limited resources. The greater the shift in strategy, the greater it is assumed are the resources needed to execute it. But resources are being cut, and not raised, in many organizations today.

Third is motivation. How do you motivate key players to move fast and tenaciously to carry out a break from the status quo? That will take years, and managers don’t have that kind of time.

The final hurdle is politics. How to overcome opposition from individuals with powerful vested interests who fear a loss of position or statute as a result of the strategic shift?

To overcome these hurdles, companies must abandon perceived wisdom in effecting change.

Conventional wisdom asserts that the greater the change, the greater the resources and time you will need to bring about results.

Instead, you need to flip conventional wisdom on its head in a way that allows you to overcome these four hurdles fast and at low cost while winning employees’ backing in executing a break from the status quo.

Let’s look at each of these hurdles in more depth and assess ways to overcome them.