I need a discussion done for week 9 and a response to 2 other classmate for my Strategy class - Human Resource Management

Strategy Implementation
You have spent the last several weeks developing your strategy and declaring a game-winning move for the company you selected for the Assignments.

Share the game-winning move you selected for your company.
Identify the most significant challenges you will face in successfully implementing your proposed move. These could be cultural, financial, operational, or any other factors that could undermine your new strategy.
Identify specific steps you will take to successfully overcome these challenges. Include references to this week’s materials to support your response.
How will you “sell” the plan to generate buy-in?

Post your initial response by Wednesday, midnight of your time zone, and reply to at least 2 of your classmates’ initial posts by Sunday, midnight of your time zone.
1st person to respond to is Chad,

Hello Dr. G. and Class,
Share the game-winning move you selected for your company.
Our lecture notes define a game-winning strategy as clear, concise, and understood by the entire organization. It is vital to success (JWI, 1). My game-winning move is moving into adjacent product segments (JWI, 2). It will involve Netflix leveraging its solid brand connection and expanding into the virtual fitness segment via a complimentary application platform called “Sweatflix”. Netflix can capitalize on its market share by offering existing users the platform for $4.99 per month, while new subscribers can access it for $8.99 per month as a stand-alone virtual fitness app. It will feature exclusive workout and fitness content curated by Netflix personalities and their favourite trainers.
Identify the most significant challenges you will face in successfully implementing your proposed move. These could be cultural, financial, operational, or any other factors that could undermine your new strategy.
Strategy often begins “at a highly abstract level” (JWI, 1). Netflix enjoys a loyal subscriber base of roughly 74.6 million in North America (Statista, 3). Still, to stay ahead of the competition, it must focus on the customer and place them at the center of the corporate mission and ongoing ideology (Sherman, 4). Some of the challenges identified when implementing this proposed move are cultural, particularly the vision (branching out into virtual fitness) (JWI, 1). I also foresee potential financial challenges (requiring significant spending to create new content and back-end platform for users) and process challenges when rolling out this new endeavour (how do we get from here to there) (JWI, 1).
Identify specific steps you will take to successfully overcome these challenges. Include references to this week’s materials to support your response.
To overcome these challenges, leadership must understand the connection between “the way people feel (dissatisfaction), where you want them to go (vision), and how they are going to get there (process)” (JWI, 1). Dissatisfaction can be internal with employees not understanding the vision and externally where customers don’t quite understand the connection. Netflix must ensure that the vision is clear and that a significant investment is committed to the game-winning move. Netflix is committing to investing more than $17 billion in the content through this year, up 25% from 2021 (Irish Times, 5). A large portion of those funds must be allocated to Sweatflix so that employees understand the importance of this internally and the results reflect well externally once customers see the quality of the content. People must feel that the destination and road-map to get there is well planned out (JWI, 1).
How will you “sell” the plan to generate buy-in?
The process must be solid, well planned, articulated effectively, and backed by significant and meaningful investment to propel the game-winning move forward and create a continued promising future at the company (JWI, 1). Netflix needs its employees engaged and excited about this proposition and requires buy-in from every level to make this a success. As Jeff Bezos is noted in Leonard Sherman’s book, “be stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details” (4). To sell the vision, Netflix needs input, feedback, and engagement from its valued employee base to allow for flexibility and evolution through the process. Still, it has to be razor-focused on forging into a new market segment (4).
Regards,
Chad
Source List:

JWI 540. 2022. Week Nine Lecture Notes.
JWI 540. 2022. Week Six Lecture Notes.
Statista. 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/250937/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-in-the-us/
Leonard Sherman. 2017. If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!

5. Anna Nicolau, Christoper Grimes. 2021. The Irish Times. Streaming wars drive media groups to spend more than $100bn on new content. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/streaming-wars-drive-media-groups-to-spend-more-than-100bn-on-new-content-1.4765579#:~:text=Netflix%20is%20set%20to%20spend%20more%20than%20%2417%20billion%20on,cash%20flow%20positive%20in%202022

2nd person to respond to is Xiaodong

Hello Dr. G and Class:
Share the game-winning move you selected for your company.
The game-winning move I choose is to develop a product for Mold-Masters to combine a brazed nozzle and industry-standard parts to become a competitive new product for the hot runner market. The purpose is to disrupt the low to medium-end hot runner market, in which Mold-Master was never a significant player in this segment.
Identify the most significant challenges you will face in successfully implementing your proposed move. These could be cultural, financial, operational, or other factors that could undermine your new strategy.
Mold-Master has the capacity and resources to make this move. However, the biggest challenge is management’s mind: Mold-Master’s brazed nozzles are a critical competitive advantage. The brazed nozzle should only sell to the premium market. Using this technology in the low-end market may hurt the sales of premium products. But since we are facing a growth bottleneck right now, we need to find new growth opportunities. For the global economy after covid, the future is uncertain with the supply chain issues and inflation pressure (1). Having a product that can differentiate Mold-Master from other players in a broader market is essential for the company to reach its growth goals.
Mold-Master’s mission is to deliver an outstanding end-to-end experience to our customers. This approach will enhance the experience of low-end customers, they will receive exceptional performance they were never able to afford, so it can profitable attract and retain satisfied customers (2), to provide sustainable growth opportunities to Mold-Masters.
Identify specific steps you will take to successfully overcome these challenges. Include references to this week’s materials to support your response.

Communicating the strategic objective, the competitive advantage, and the timing of implementation throughout the organization in a clear and meaningful way is necessary for people to embrace and internalize the strategy (3). When the whole company understands the strategy from top to bottom, this product’s design, manufacture, and marketing will work with this same purpose.
Business alignment, where all corporate capabilities, resources, incentives, and business culture and process are aligned to support this strategic move (2).
Adjust the organization structure and create a new value stream to design, manufacture, and sell this product.
Monitor the key performance metrics and make time to do the update, and you will get the result you measure (4).

How will you “sell” the plan to generate buy-in?
I will focus on the ROI of this project and the impact of the market share. A reasonably small investment cab has a significant return with this proposed move. There is minimum effort for new component development, and the total estimated investment is around 500K USD. No need to make new parts since we will use existing industry-standard parts. The estimated sale will start from 300K USD per year. With a profit of 30K USD per year, the ROI will be around 6%.
The second point is this will help Mold-Masters maintain the marketing leadership position and extend the share to 25% in five to ten years.
Thanks
Xiao
Ref:

Mohamed El-Erian. The world’s engines are spluttering: IMF points to deeper problems beyond 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/23/world-imf-forecasts-economic-growth
Sherman, If you are in a dog fight, Become a Cat!
JWI540 week nine lectures note
EOP video, week nine. Jack Welch.

© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be
copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 1 of 13

JWI 540: Strategy

Week Nine Lecture Notes

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 2 of 13

EXECUTING THE PLAN

What It Means

We’ve learned why developing a clear strategy for your organization is vital for its success. However, that

is only the beginning. For your strategy to be successful, your entire organization needs to understand it

to bring it to life. As a strategy leader, you must be able to communicate your strategic plan in a way that

gets people excited and generates buy-in. You must also understand and manage the forces that may

resist the change. Finally, you will need to secure and allocate the resources – both human and capital –

to successfully implement your plan.

Why It Matters

• Execution is essential to winning. Without an effective delivery, everything you have done up to
this stage is nothing more than an academic exercise.

• Winning takes everything you’ve got. It takes your best ideas, your best people, and the drive to
get work done. Do not drop the ball when it comes to putting the execution of the strategy in the
hands of your best people and giving them the resources they need to get the job done.

• A failed execution is demoralizing. It undermines the effort that the team has put into the project
and can leave the organization in a worse place than it was before the new strategy was
developed.

“In real life, strategy is actually very

straightforward. You pick a general

direction and implement like hell.”

Jack Welch

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 3 of 13

YOUR STARTING POINT

1. How will communication be handled to inform stakeholders about the strategy, get their buy-in,

and ensure their questions are addressed? Have you created an atmosphere to make this

process energizing for the team?

2. What metrics will be used to monitor how effectively each part of the organization embraces

and executes the new strategy? How can you collect the data needed to ensure you are

making progress?

3. What barriers might stop you from fully implementing the strategy?

4. What will likely happen to your company if you don’t execute this strategy?

5. Are you willing to pull top talent from their daily work to implement the strategy?

6. If a merger, partnership or acquisition is being considered, is there a sufficiently robust process

in place for evaluating every aspect of their business, such as pending lawsuits, environmental

considerations, regulatory controls, quality of operating systems, real estate, and corporate

culture?

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 4 of 13

HOW DO WE GET READY FOR IMPLEMENTATION?

You have assessed your company’s strategic capabilities, identified your target customers, sized up the

competition, considered your strategic options, and finally settled on a strategy. It is time to implement,

right? We do not want to squelch anyone’s enthusiasm, but you are more likely to succeed if you have a

plan that sets out activities, priorities, and processes for implementing your strategy.

YOU NEED A PLAN

Strategy initiatives often begin at a highly abstract level. There is usually a lot of work to be done to bring

those lofty goals back down to earth. Many companies find it helpful to flesh out their strategic objectives

by asking questions. What does success look like? How does it feel? What are we doing or not doing to

achieve our objectives? What are our competitors doing? How will the future look if we make, or do not

make, this change?

To put some meat on the bones of its strategic goal of expanding into the United States, IKEA might have

depicted what success would look like by creating maps with pins indicating the locations of initial stores.

Would they be in the suburbs of big cities on the east and west coasts? College towns like Ann Arbor or

Palo Alto? Once the locations were identified, the company’s strategy planners could have sketched out

the necessary activities – for example, the creation of supplier networks, marketing campaigns, and

staffing models – needed to turn those pins into actual, profitable stores.

As you put together your implementation plan, there will likely be some conflict among different courses of

action. For example, you may discover that retraining existing staff or hiring new people is a bottleneck

that will delay all the other activities. Meanwhile, while you are concerned about hiring, one of your

colleagues is extremely eager to make an acquisition, and another has convened focus groups to provide

input for branding strategies. How do you coordinate these various activities?

ALIGNING THE ELEMENTS OF A PLAN

It may seem like you have an infinite number of approaches to the many strategic activities ahead.

Fortunately, you can group these into a manageable set of categories. You should consider at least five

key elements in order to successfully move from the strategy at a conceptual level toward a strategy in

action.

1. The first of these is the strategy itself. Communicating the strategic objectives, your competitive

advantage, and the timing of implementation throughout the organization in a clear and

meaningful way is absolutely necessary for people to embrace and internalize the strategy.

Instead of talking about your strategy, you might try referring to your agenda to emphasize that

the strategy will shape how management spends its time.

2. You need to ensure that people are ready to implement the strategy. Hiring, staffing, training, and

coaching must be reoriented to focus on the strategy and the activities supporting the company’s

advantage. You may have the right people, but they may need to be reassigned, which may

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 5 of 13

require putting their current projects on hold or eliminating them altogether. You also may not

have the number or type of people you need. If that is the case, not much can get underway until

the necessary people are brought on board.

3. The organizational structure of your business may also need to be modified. For example, the

structure of a law firm shifting from a local strategy to a national strategy might change so that the

firm’s profit centers would be organized around individual offices, rather than firm-wide practice

areas focused on different areas of the law. The organization of offices, regions, and practice

groups, along with internal reporting relationships, would have to shift to better support the

strategy.

4. Much of what needs to be mapped out during strategy planning, and carried out during

implementation, are processes. A geographically expanding law firm, for example, might need to

rethink its process for hiring new associates in order to reflect the firm’s national reach. It may

also want to change its IT processes to monitor potential client conflicts across all geographies.

5. Metrics, such as quality-control measures or customer feedback data, are needed to track

activities tied to the strategic objectives and determine where adjustments are needed. When

they are linked to a meaningful rewards system, metrics can also help coordinate and motivate

the actions of diverse groups working on different aspects of the strategy.

SETTING PLAN PRIORITIES

Now that you’ve made decisions related to these five factors, it is time to get busy, right? Wrong. Many

organizations go astray at this point. They are busy working on the implementation of their strategy, but

busy is not necessarily productive. There is one last step you need to take.

You need to prioritize. If you’ve been successful in communicating your strategy and generating

enthusiasm and support throughout the organization, you will have plenty of people eager to move

forward. But remember, it is not realistic to think that everything will be done in the first week. You can set

the top priorities for strategy implementation in various ways. One of the most effective methods is to

frame the situation in the negative. Ask yourself, “What specific aspects of our organization have the

potential to derail this strategic initiative?” Now is the time to consider whether you will have difficulty

hiring people with the right skills fast enough or identifying an acquisition target that meets your agreed-

upon criteria, for instance.

At first, your list of barriers to success may seem discouraging. But systematically group and analyze

them until you have a manageable list of necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for success. From

this list, generate five top priorities that must happen for your strategy to succeed. These priorities

deserve significant managerial attention. Clear priorities offer several benefits. They help align the

organization, making it clear what needs to happen first and where scarce resources should be allocated.

They can also make difficult decisions easier to accept, such as shutting down a project, closing a plant,

or laying off people, because they provide a rationale for controversial moves.

Remember, a task is not a priority if it cannot be accomplished. Make sure you have identified achievable

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 6 of 13

tasks. Then, make sure you do them. If you are having difficulty tackling the top five priorities on your list

because of limited resources or time constraints, do not bother with the other items on the list. People will

often go after low-hanging fruit and keep busy with strategic activities. Do not fool yourself that being busy

working means you are strategically doing the right work. If it is clear you are not up to the task of

achieving your top priorities, go back and revise your strategy and your expectations before taking action

again.

COMMUNICATING THE PLAN

To carry out the plan, managers throughout the organization will do the heavy lifting of translating the

important activities into specific actions that they and their teams will execute. Therefore, it is crucial that

all employees have a clear understanding of what you are collectively trying to achieve. Your

communication of strategy objectives needs to:

✓ Be Received: Cutting through the noise of the work environment is difficult. To be noticed, deliver

your message through multiple channels, including in-person, print, digital, and social media. The

message should be somewhat provocative or surprising. When employees pause with thoughts

like “That’s crazy!” or “That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” you’ve achieved part of your goal.

✓ Be Understood: Once you have people’s attention, buzzwords and jargon will only confuse and

annoy them. Even clear language can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Sometimes, a picture

is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, you need to tell a story. Remember, any lack of clarity

you have around your core message will come through to your audience. And remember, there is

value in repeating and reinforcing the message. It is far better to potentially over-communicate a

strategy than to have it miss even a fraction of its intended audience.

✓ Be Credible: Even if your employees are rapt and understand your message clearly, they need

to believe in it. If there is a credibility gap of any kind, it is unlikely people will make any real

commitments. And if the strategy is a departure from the past, some people may doubt whether

the firm’s leaders are serious about implementing it. Others may wonder whether the funds and

skills are available to pursue the strategy.

✓ Be Actionable: A step-by-step process for moving from concepts to activities to results,

identifying appropriate resources, metrics, and timelines, conveys how the strategy will actually

get implemented. If each employee can see how they can tangibly contribute to the strategy

through their personal efforts and without taking unsupported risks, your communication is

making a real contribution to the firm’s success.

✓ Be Timely: Some news grows obsolete quickly. Other messages are timeless. By the time you

craft your internal communications plan and perfect every word, the message may have grown

stale. Recognize that tradeoffs will have to be made between thorough preparation and timely

communication. When it seems appropriate, use word of mouth to spread messages virally.

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 7 of 13

With a clearly communicated translation of your strategy into a prioritized list of activities, you are well on

your way to putting your strategy into action.

HOW DO WE ALLOCATE RESOURCES?

You have created a prioritized list of activities designed to further your strategic objectives, but as you go

through it, you realize something’s missing. Money needs to be directed to projects. People need to be

assigned to teams. Plant capacity needs to be committed to product lines. Prime office space needs to be

dedicated to departments. These decisions will also mean that some projects, teams, product lines, and

departments will receive fewer resources.

The activities you have identified as important to your strategy must be translated into budget items,

whether for a specific project or as part of the annual budget of a division or department. And because

resources are limited, they must be allocated among various activities. Not everyone will get as much as

they think they need.

Even if your company’s existing resources are well matched with your plan, the details and sequence of

their allocation will be challenging to work out. If the strategy is ambitious and requires adding people,

doing an acquisition, or opening new plants, then the process becomes more complex and anxiety-

producing.

TOP DOWN, BOTTOM UP

The allocation of resources is an iterative, two-way process. In other words, through conversations,

forecasts, and negotiations, teams become more precise in where and how resources should be used. An

early strategic budget may look very little like the eventual budget that is implemented after a few weeks

of planning activity. As noted in the previous lecture notes, the company’s leadership must vividly

communicate the specific aims of the strategy – the types of activities needed for it to succeed – to the

entire organization.

Managers in the individual business units take these overarching directives, translate them into proposed

projects and activities, and then seek the resources to make them a reality. Actions must clearly link to

the strategy in a meaningful way. Although it’s tempting to try to cram a pet project into a strategic plan,

it’s difficult to defend a new plant in Dallas as supportive of a U.S. company’s global expansion. Senior

managers will, in turn, consider the funding requests for these projects and activities, accepting some and

rejecting others. There may be several rounds of back-and-forth.

For example, senior management at a European insurance company communicated its strategy

throughout the organization, along with a portfolio of opportunities that might further the strategy. The key

message from the senior leaders was that they wanted to see more proposals for projects farther from the

core business. These more innovative – albeit more uncertain and unfamiliar – projects were expected to

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 8 of 13

collectively result in higher returns, outweighing the higher associated risk. At first, the business unit

heads continued to propose safe projects that represented incremental changes away from the core

business. Such a response isn’t unusual. Often, a combination of existing financial incentives and self-

preservation instincts leads managers to propose low-risk projects with reachable targets, despite senior

management’s request for more ambitious ideas. The senior leaders rejected these projects and called

for more creative and far-reaching proposals, which they ultimately started getting. But the desired results

did not come from static planning documents that publicized strategic priorities. Managers brought the

message to life and communicated their priorities both in words and in deeds.

Indeed, communication played a big role. Senior managers told admiring stories of crazy, off-the-wall

proposals they had received. Actions reinforced these messages. For example, leaders earmarked

funding for some of the riskier proposals and assigned high-profile people to work on these noncore

efforts. They were stingy in committing funds to ongoing business-as-usual projects.

HOW TO GET BETTER PROPOSALS FROM MANAGERS

Inevitably, ideas must also flow in the opposite direction – from top down to bottom up. Many companies

use a formal proposal process to communicate needs back up to senior leaders. At this stage, managers

must get the attention of upper management in order to successfully compete for limited resources.

Leaders want to see documentation, arguments, and plans that are clear, quantifiable, and logical. Such

details not only help you gain the necessary resources, but also create strategies that are more easily

aligned with other company activities.

Proposal templates sometimes help to clarify the information needed and spur movement toward the

firm’s goals. Templates also have a potential downside, though. They can transform the planning process

into a fill-in-the-blanks exercise that fosters conventional thinking. In the best case, managers and

employees develop templates at the business unit level, rather than having them imposed from on high or

– worse yet – from outside advisors or consultants.

Timelines and a bit of well-placed pressure can also move the process along. When bottlenecks develop,

senior managers must be ready to step in to get the planning process back on track. In the case of the

European insurer, each business unit was asked to propose specific projects under the strategic plan and

support the proposal with a business case and a budget. One business unit was slow in pulling its

information together, and the overall resource allocation process ground to a halt. Midlevel managers and

administrators sent a number of messages – both pleading and threatening – to the head of the errant

unit. It may be that the head of the business unit thought the deadline was not real and was waiting to

hear when his data were really needed. Perhaps he did not think his proposal would be an integral part of

the overall planning and budgeting process. In the end, it took an unexpected visit from a senior leader

and a one-on-one discussion to break the logjam.

PLAYING THE BUDGET GAME

Allocating resources is a bit like a game with many moving pieces. In that spirit, consider a hypothetical

situation in which you take four friends to lunch and have just $200 to spend. Would you:

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 9 of 13

1. Ask everyone what they would like to order, and if the cost of their selections totals less than

$200, order and enjoy your meal?

2. Ask everyone what they would like to order, and if the cost of their selections totals more than

$200, reveal your limit and ask the group to make different choices?

3. Talk to the restaurant ahead of time so that it only offers your group meals in your price range?

4. Tell your guests in advance that they each have $40 to spend on the meal, including tip?

5. Ask everyone to share the portion of the bill over $200?

This example may sound silly, but in reality, it illustrates the many ways in which group decisions about

resource allocation can play out. What you communicate, when, and to whom, has an impact on the

choices made. Some people even try to game the system. We’ve all been to dinner with someone who

orders the lobster when you’ve already agreed to split the bill equally.

In some companies, a project may benefit one area and be paid for by another. Some projects wouldn’t

be proposed if the business unit heads knew the financial constraints of the firm. Because strategically

important tasks may stall or collapse due to lack of funding, senior management needs to have a clear

idea of its objectives as everyone heads into the budget process.

• Are you trying to please everyone equally?

• Do you favor some businesses over others?

• Can you get the most general strategic bang for your buck or for the project with the highest

potential?

There are no right answers here, but awareness of how you structure the budget process will help you

generate the kind of strategic proposals you want and need to win.

HOW DO WE PUT OUR PLANS INTO ACTION?

Having developed your strategic objectives, identified your critical priorities, and mustered the requisite

resources, you’re ready to launch your strategy. Of course, a company doesn’t simply take off with a

strategy and then put it on autopilot. Even the best strategy needs active oversight and may require

regular updating. Strategy management is another one of those nonlinear, iterative processes, just like

strategy development. Still, your main aim will be constant – the achievement of your critical strategic

objectives and the removal of obstacles that stand in their way.

If you are a manager overseeing an activity to support the strategy – say, new customer satisfaction

initiatives – you may feel frustrated. Resources may have been formally allocated to your project, but

somehow, you are perpetually shorthanded. Your project is supposedly a high priority, but you can’t get

your phone calls to the marketing team answered. You’re having difficulty protecting your budget and

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 10 of 13

decision-making ability. All of your management and communications skills will be put to the test.

Your biggest challenge is likely to be mobilizing employees in support of the strategic priorities. You may

need to get the right people into strategically important roles, or help people adjust to the inevitable

changes and disruptions while staying motivated.

There will be resistance. In fact, as will be discussed in greater detail later in your studies, even when

people appear to be on board with a new strategy, they can be obstacles to change. Work routines are

hard to give up. Unlearning established ways of doing business is usually uncomfortable. There will also

be people who preferred an alternate strategy or, for other reasons, don’t want to see the new strategy

succeed.

Early on, you need to win these people over, or else ask them to leave the organization. You may also

use some of the financial and non-financial techniques to reward and motivate people discussed in your

People Management course. Incentives do not need to be expensive to be effective. Symbolic rewards,

like an award for hitting delivery targets, can be a significant motivator. But managers are kidding

themselves if they think money doesn’t matter. Think about the equity and sustainability of rewards, as

well. If it looks like some people are getting more than others for no good reason, high performers may

feel underappreciated and decide to leave. If people get accustomed to extra perks, they will feel less

well-off when those special rewards disappear.

A MODEL FOR MOBILIZING

As you determine where to fight your battles and how to spend your energy, you’ll need a plan to

galvanize support. You should understand the three vital components of any program that aspires to get

results. Remember the acronym DVP: dissatisfaction, vision, process. When refocusing organizational

efforts, these three factors must all be in place before behaviors will change.

Dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs creates a burning platform from which your people will be

eager to escape. Without some reason to move away from the status quo, it’s difficult for any strategy to

gain traction. Dissatisfaction alone isn’t enough, however. Anywhere might be better than where you are,

but a destination is needed before people actually start to change behaviors and shift mindsets.

A vision of a positive future must be clear to each and every employee. Whether the galvanizing vision is

to change the world, to beat a competitor, or to delight the customer, doesn’t matter as much as whether

it is clear, compelling, and memorable. Sometimes, the vision can be more modest, but expressed just as

compellingly using a simple analytic tool called Gap Analysis. It articulates the differences between the

current state and the ideal future state along one or more dimensions. Whether the gaps involve product

quality or brand awareness, they can create a stark vision of where the organization needs to go, as well

as suggest specific improvements needed to get there.

Once people are ready to change and excited about the future, one more major obstacle remains: how do

we get from here to there? A process with actionable steps is the third necessary component of a

winning strategy implementation.

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 11 of 13

Good managers understand the interrelatedness of the three components:

1. The way people feel (dissatisfaction)

2. Where you want them to go (vision)

3. How they are going to get there (process)

Those managers spend significant time and attention on each of the three. In fact, if any one of them is

missing, success will be elusive. For example, many strategic initiatives get off to a fast start, but then

stall out. Employees are dissatisfied, and therefore understand the need for change. They have agreed to

a set of steps that will leave their problems behind and enthusiastically begin the process. The effort then

fizzles out once people get busy again. Suddenly, they are not clear where they are headed. The vision

gets clouded. Without a clear destination, momentum slows down, despite the early zeal.

Some projects initially leave people worse off, so existing dissatisfaction only intensifies. But a skillful

leader will have articulated such a compelling and vivid vision of the future that people are willing to

endure the current pain. This combination makes employees eager to get going, both pushed by their

poor situation and pulled by the promising future. The frustration happens when there isn’t a strong

process to guide them from where they are to where they are going. Other efforts never seem to quite get

off the ground. They have a host of merits, and a clear set of actions leading to an admirable goal. There

is only one problem. No one is really dissatisfied, so no one feels the need to change. These strategic

plans go to the bottom drawer and stay there. They are not given much thought until times get bad.

Remember, a strategy is only as good as the time it is introduced, the way it is introduced, and the degree

to which it is implemented successfully. And in light of the recent events, there is one final word:

ANTICIPATING AND PLANNING FOR THE UNEXPECTED

One of the biggest lessons we have learned from the pandemic of 2020 is that the most elegantly

prepared strategic plan may not be enough to win. Sometimes, threats emerge that can derail our best

efforts and put even a profitable company into bankruptcy. Although it would be futile to try and precisely

identify the range of mega-disasters that could arise, it is leaders’ responsibility to consider the “What ifs?”

and to plan accordingly. At the very least, consider business continuity plans to help guide an

organization during times of disruption. These plans could be as simple as procedures on working

remotely when face-to-face business is not possible or advisable. They could identify alternative

manufacturing locations should a primary location unexpectedly become unavailable. They could address

contingencies about various natural disasters that could impact the supply chain.

The depth and scope of these business continuity plans will vary in complexity just as business

operations vary. The key takeaway here in a world where pandemics, natural disasters, and man-made

disasters are a clear and present threat, is to anticipate and prepare for the worst-case scenario. No

longer a special consideration for leaders and strategists, having these tough anticipatory conversations

as part of strategy planning should now become the norm.

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 12 of 13

SUCCEEDING BEYOND THE COURSE

As you read the materials and participate in class activities, stay focused on the key learning outcomes

for the week and how they can be applied to your job.

• Develop, prioritize, and communicate a plan to implement your game-winning move

o Create a strategy communicate plan to get everyone excited.

o Always be ready to summarize (think elevator pitch) the strategy that was selected and

the high-level reasons for why it was selected. Never be caught off guard.

o Present to management a realistic projected cost. You jeopardize your credibility for

future projects if you low-ball the estimates.

o Counter the cost with projected benefits from the investment.

o Calculate and communicate how long it will take for the strategy to pay for itself.

o Assess, in advance, competing priorities for the funds. Would any other business unit

also benefit from the strategic initiative?

o If you receive your requested funding, will it reliably cover the costs? Management never

appreciates their door being knocked on too often.

o If you don’t get fully funded, have a back-up plan. What part of the strategy will need to

be revised, postponed or eliminated?

• Assess the forces that can undermine the new strategy

One of the pitfalls companies experience is trying to accomplish too much at once. As a rule of

thumb, organizations generally can successfully implement only one or two large strategic

initiatives at the same time. Best-in-class companies “right-size” their strategies to fit the

capabilities of their organization. To accomplish this, you may want to break down a large

initiative into smaller steps. If you see that the organization is executing them faster than

expected, you can always accelerate your timeline. To guide you, answer the following questions:

o Does your organization have a track record of implementing large initiatives on-time and

within budget?

o Does it have experience in running large cross-functional initiatives?

o Does your organization assign your top talent to lead strategic initiatives?

o Is your team able to focus on both running the day-to-day business and a strategic

initiative?

• Identify the resources to needed support the execution of your plan

To give your organization the best chance at successfully implementing the strategy, put your

best, hungriest, and most passionate people on the job. Keep leaders of the organization

involved in making sure the strategy is being implemented though monitoring, mentoring and

communicating. Build a compensation model that ties incentives, including salaries, bonuses and

career potential for those implementing or meeting the strategic goals. You’re asking for a lot in

terms of the focus and effort needed to bring the strategy to life, reward those who get it done.

JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 13 of 13

ACTION PLAN

To apply what I have learned this week in my course to my job, I will…

Action Item(s)

Resources and Tools Needed (from this course and in my workplace)

Timeline and Milestones

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