HR Pulse

3 key elements in ensuring successful strategy implementation

For over a decade, my colleagues and I have been driven to understand why up to 70% of change initiatives either fail entirely, or fail to deliver on their intended ROI (John Kotter, 1995; McKinsey & Company, 2006).  

We believe that there are three factors - leadership, project structure and commitment to clear outcomes - that are critical to ensuring a successful outcome for a change management project.  

If we can consistently provide solutions to these challenges, the process of strategy implementation will add far more value to organisational stakeholders.

1. Leadership

Committed leadership is the most critical factor to ensuring the successful implementation of a strategic project:

• At a sponsorship level, and particularly regarding projects that are focused on enterprise transformation, I advise that you have eyes-on, sign-off and oversight from the highest operational structure in the organisation. This is usually the exco.
• At strategic project oversight and decision-making level, it is good practice to involve the functional head of the business area. This individual will be accountable for project deliverables - a GM or equivalent.  

This role of project lead typically takes the form of:

• Having sight of, and sign off on, the project brief,
• Chairing the project board, and
• Receiving regular feedback from the project manager.  

This structure should ensure an unbroken line of accountability from the delivery teams on the ground through the project board - that has general oversight of, and responsibility for, the entire project - up to exco.

Questions to ask about leadership are:

• Who are key individuals that we should engage with early in the project initiation phase?
• How could we forge appropriate linkages between the project board and exco?
• How could we ensure that the project lead is able to provide updates to exco regularly and request assistance?
• How do we build a project leadership structure that ensures we are able to influence all key areas of the company affected by the project?

Key take-out: Complete a comprehensive stakeholder analysis during the project initiation phase and ensure key influencers are sitting around the table when you kick the project off.

2. Project structure

The term ‘project management’ is loosely used to describe the structure thrown around a project to ensure that deadlines are met within allocated budgets. A key challenge is determining how much structure is appropriate for a particular project.

A solution to this is to have a high level of structure at a senior project management level so that key players like the project lead, project manager and delivery team leads have a very clear idea of what their day-to-day project responsibilities are. Within this arrangement, you can then find the flexibility to build project solutions as the need arises during the life cycle of a project.  

Questions to ask about project structure are:

• Who should sit on the project board?
• How often should it meet?
• How does this entity engage with various project stakeholders?

Key take-out: It is important to build the right level of project structure, which simultaneously provides sufficient organisation to ensure project cohesion and yet does not stifle day-to-day delivery.  

3. Commitment to clear outcomes

A successful project plan clearly describes the specific goals and outcomes you want to achieve with the project.

The most effective way to do this is by facilitating a project-planning process at a project board level. All senior-level project members would sit on this structure. Through this process, you would:

• Document a set of end-goals for the project,
• Identify potential risk areas, and
• Identify where uncertainty or disagreement, which requires resolution before a project can begin, exists within that organisation.  

Questions to ask about this deliverable are:

• What is the ideal outcome that we want to see from this project?
• Do all stakeholders agree with the answer?  
• What are the linkages to existing projects in the business?
• How could we dovetail with these to both share resources and enable outcomes?  
• What are the timelines we believe are appropriate for the project?
• Are these timelines realistic?
• What are some of the difficult relationships and/or dynamics within our organisation that might prove difficult to manage in the context of our project?

Key take-out: It is imperative to spend enough time documenting a project brief that all stakeholders buy into and accept before implementation starts. The quality of the thinking we apply at the start of a project will very often determine the quality of the result that follows.

Successful strategy implementation requires committed leadership, appropriate project structure and documented project outcomes that are brought together within an integrated project methodology to achieve success. Change implementation as a methodology provides a positive response to an area of management studies that has a poor track record and allows us to feel more confident about the future of our professional practice.