Strategy Management: Strategy Implementation and Strategic Control

Strategy Implementation, the 4th step of the strategy managementprocess, is putting formulated strategies into action.

Without successive implementation, valuable strategies deeloped by managers are virtually worthless.

The successful implementation of strategy required 4 basic skills:

1. INTERACTING SKILL
2. ALLOCATING SKILL
3. MONITORING SKILL
4. ORGANIZING SKILL

INTERACTING SKILL:

Interacting Skill is the ability to manager people during implementation. Managers who are able to understand the fears and frustrations others feel during the implementation of a new strategy tend to be the best implementers. These managers empathize with organization members and bargain for the best way to put a strategy into action.

ALLOCATING SKILL :

Allocating skill is the ability to provide the organizational resources necessary to implementing a strategy. 

Successful implementers are talented at scheduling jobs, budgeting time and money, allocating other resources that are critical for implementation.

MONITORING SKILL:

Monitoring skill is the ability to use information to determine whether a problem has arisen that is blocking implementation.

Good Strategy Implementers set up feedback systems that continually tell them about the status of strategy implementation.

ORGANIZING SKILL :

Organizing skill is the ability to create throughout the organization a network of people who can help solve implementation problems as they occur.

Good implementers customize this network to include individuals who can handle the special types of  problems anticipated in the implementation of a particular strategy.

Overall , the successful implementation of a strategy requires handling people appropriately, allocating resources necessary for implementation, monitoring and implementing progress, and solving implementation problems as they occur.

Perhaps the most important requirements are knowing which people can solve specific implementation problems and being able to involve them when those problems arise.

STRATEGIC CONTROL:

Strategic Control, the last step of the Strategy Management Process, consists of monitoring and evaluating the strategy management process as a whole to ensure that it is operating properly.

Strategic Control focuses on the activities involved in environmental analysis, organizational direction, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy control itself - checking that all steps of the strategy management process are appropriate, compatible and functioning properly.