Strategy Implementation in Management - Essay Example

Why are organizations seeking to implement their chosen strategies through projects? By In this essay I will discuss why are organizations seeking to implement their chosen strategies through projects? In this essay I will try to explore the motives and advantages those are behind the implementation of strategies through projects. This essay also discusses the organizations point of view regarding the implementation of strategies through projects. Any strategy development session values its importance on eventually distill vision into critical company issues, and, if the business is in reality serious, these matters then get interpreted into projects, with diverse deliverables and back-up strategies. Project management is a regulation that frequently acquires less attention when frustrating to move strategy from the meeting room to back places of work and the market. There is an obvious link among achieving objectives and implementing special levels of business strategy (Quinn, 2000). On the working point, strategy focuses on the assignment of dissimilar functions and departments, as well as their association in performing the development work (Rumelt et al, 1991). On the industry level, strategy decides the marketplaces for its goods and the customs of contending in those marketplaces so that every product attains its business intention. On the business level, strategy is concerned with the accomplishment of the business all together, illustrative what reimbursement should be required and why (Kanter, 2002). Over the past few years there has been mounting interest in project management as a way for strategy accomplishment. This interest has resulted in noteworthy advances in understanding of how strategy can be more successfully implemented. Dealing first with (a), it has been recognized for many years that implementation is frequently the graveyard of strategy (Rumelt et al, 1991). The task of project management, project managements core concern is to carry a definite outcome in a particular time and at a particular cost. Traditional project management focuses on deliverables, on scheduling and coordinating tasks, and on mobilizing resources (Kanter, 2002). Primarily, traditional project management deals with hard task based business issues, as opposed to softer, less tangible factors, except for defining the responsibility of project manager and the project team (Hofstede, 1994). The design theory of strategic management promotes the notion of a neat strategic analysis-selection accomplishment process. However, the substitute process-based school of strategic management stresses the primacy of: (Quinn, 2000) • Incremental management • Cycles of purposeful and growing change, as opposed to linear strategy development. • Implementation and strategic idea as inseparable vs. discrete phases of strategic analysis and strategic action By blurring the boundaries between strategic analysis and achievement we now see a central role for project management in strategy implementation. This is especially the case where we are dealing with foremost cross-functional projects like TQM and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) (Hofstede, 1994). Increasingly, project management is being functioning outsides its core area of improving the "competitive hardware of businesses to their competitive software, and to the development of implementing strategic change. Project management in the arena of strategy implementation needs therefore to hold a number of complex, interdependent and fluid factors in order to be genuinely valuable. Managers are, in many cases, only beginning to learn how to process change issues successfully and to turn them into projects (Kanter, 2002). Just as strategic management has had to come to terms with this larger fluidity and ambiguity so must project management. Indeed, the philosophy of "deliberate and growing strategy in strategic management can be applied in an extensive way to strategy accomplishment and to project management. Not only do these terms pertain to project strategy but also to project value which can be partly deliberate, and partly emergent (Rumelt et al, 1991). An analytically functional (and manager friendly) approach to understanding project strategy. Project strategy may start off as deliberate but swiftly move through steps of being emergent, submerging, and ‘emergency’ and probably even detergent mode. These phases of the strategy (and equally project life-cycle) are characterized thus: (Hofstede, 1994) • Deliberate strategy: where the project has precise closing stages goals and a understandable and definite means of achieving these goals. • Emergent strategy: where the projects ending targets (and intermediate goals) are necessarily fluid, and also where the means of achieving these goals can change in new and sometimes surprising ways. • Submerging strategy: where the project is down its way its original goals now seem far-off and unrealizable, and project activities are beginning to section. • Emergency strategy: where the project is in fact fragmenting into near-random actions and where the project as a whole appears to be overtaken by events. • Detergent strategy: where the project is predictable as off-course and by now being steered back onto its innovative track, or onto a new track. The strategy cycle is not anticipated to be a deterministic series of steps ordained to always go around clockwise. Indeed, projects may alternate between deliberate/emergent modes as they are guided to (an often moving) objective. But more frequently an emergent step decays into submerging/emergency when the project goes erroneous. Even then projects may continue to fly off-course rather than being grasped firmly once again in the detergent mode (Quinn, 2000). Next we take a look at the definition of projects, predominantly to map out their interdependencies with other strategy implementation programs. We should also at this stage be very explicit in defining the strategic objectives of projects. Where these are left fluid, or taken-for-granted, there is carte blanche to organizational mystification. Also, it becomes even harder to carry out meaningful financial analysis of the project within a business case--particularly of the anticipated benefits (Hofstede, 1994). In this section I will discuss how the Strategic change can be achieved through projects: There are four main methods of implementation through which change can be achieved: • Education and communication--where workforce is influenced of the need for change. • Participation--where staff groups help out the management in the explanation of the change and the change process. • Intervention--where management initiates defined changes, regularly using projects. It allows the management to classify its requirements for the end product but uses staff participation to develop the change. • Edict--where management inculcates closely what to do. Management by projects approach is the most convinced of success and the least uncertain. This approach represents a powerful engine for change through which: (Voropajev, 1998) • Management is able to place the route and make obvious their commitment to the change, • The complex changes can clearly be managed by projects, • The accomplishment of soft changes, although opportunities can still be controlled by management through their own actions and by the initiation of projects. In addition, there must be an awareness of individual’s potential reactions to change so that they can be helped through difficulties (Hofstede, 1994). This section introduces a terms programs and I will explain how we can develop strategic through projects management. A program is an outline for grouping existing projects and defining new ones. It differs from a project in that way it does not necessarily have a single objective, or a finite time horizon. Programs can act as a bridge between strategy and projects, providing a framework for structuring and managing the process and thereby increasing the chances of successful implementation (Kanter, 2002). The program management approach breaks down extensive objectives into discrete projects. Well constructed programs have a number of characteristics pertinent to strategic change, specifically they: (Kerzner, 2000) • Identify the dominant linkages and interdependencies between projects. The program approach evaluates on hand and potential projects, identifies the significant dimensions for strategic change and groups projects accordingly (Hofstede, 1994). These dimensions may relate to definite initiatives, product markets, competencies, customer types or scarce resources. Interdependencies of projects within the program become the focus of managerial concentration. These are carefully analyzed, and in some cases are redefined, merged or rejected. • Provide a mechanism for arrangement and prioritization of projects. The program framework establishes a mechanism to facilitate senior management that knows what types of projects are being undertaken and the on the whole progress to date (McElroy, 1995). Using the program structure, senior management can influence the rate of advancement of the programs by altering their priority and resource levels. Furthermore, the program structure itself helps in come to a decision relative priorities and identifying the logical sequences of projects (Quinn, 2000). • Allow projects to be assimilated on an incremental origin programs incrementally take up bottom-up projects. In practice, many project proposals are put forward by line managers to meet supposed needs or opportunities (Wiliamson, 1999). In the absence of a program support, these are evaluated in seclusion and tend to drift. The dilemma facing senior management is that fostering initiatives from line managers is desirable, but an arbitrary group of improvements and investments which a bottom-up scheme generates is implausible to accomplish the strategic goals. This section discusses the program management benefits This approach provides benefits by: • demanding that the strategy formulation method not only determines the elected strategic change but also clearly addresses the question of how it is to be implemented; • creating an ordered framework for the strategic change process, thereby ensuring critical elements are acknowledged and an absolute set of actions is specified and assigned without crucial interfaces (such as dependencies on other projects) being overlooked; (Ansoff, 1984) • enabling senior management to observe, express and organize the implementation process by creating two specific roles; program client and program manager: to the program client, frequently a director or senior manager, has overall business responsibility for the program and all projects within it; to the program manager is accountable for the interfaces between and the co-ordination of all the projects within the program, and reports to the program client; (Hofstede, 1994) • making project definition more organized and purposeful, thereby dropping the prevalence of long duration projects, which have a higher risk of failure and obsolescence (Wiliamson, 1999). To explore how strategy implementation processes can be implemented through project management I will look at the implementation framework: enriching project management. This is explored as follows: (Grundy, 1993) • Project definition • Project diagnosis • Project planning and implementation • Lessons and conclusion The implementation framework: moving project management: Project definition; before we look at an indication of the implementation framework we should first examine the topic of project definition. Not only is this rarely self-evident with operational projects but it is even harder to define for major strategy implementation projects. To begin with, these strategy-related projects may be poorly scoped or time delimited. Paradoxically strategy implementation projects should in point of fact be defined with much more rigor than usually is the case. But at the same time there needs to be some latitude in terms of fluidity of scope and focus within the project definition. (Grundy, 1993) Project diagnosis: Project diagnosis can be greatly facilitated by a small number of implementation tools. First, root-cause analysis (sometimes known as fishbone analysis) helps managers to recognize the principal cause of a particular problem. (Root cause analysis is a tool taken from the quality management literature.) This deals with a typical analysis of communication. This is typically a weakness in many organizations and often a primary candidate for a strategic breakthrough project. Notice the complication of even surface root causes: these would need to be pursued further back to their decisive cause beneath this still relatively general level of analysis (Quinn, 2000). Project planning and implementation: Further tools for fleshing out project plans consist of How-How analysis and From-To analysis. How-How analysis can be used to work through the comprehensive implications posed by strategy implementation. For instance, in a famous Harvard Business School case study, Michael Porter expresses how a US corporation, Skill, a power tools business, tried to accomplish a turnaround (or detergent) strategy (Kanter, 2002). This strategy had two most important planks: refocusing delivery channels and plummeting Skills cost base in a challenge to become market leader. Implicitly, Skill management worked out the logic of implementation unconsciously by means of a "How-How approach (Hamel, 1996). The key ingredients of this implementation strategy can now be depicted through the How-How methodology. How-How can act as a very fruitful brainstorming tool to support managers to imagine through (in a progressive degree of detail) the implications of the strategy (Hofstede, 1994). Implementation forces: Implementation forces (IMF) analysis is resultant from the original concept of force field analysis. Implementation forces analysis can be defined as follows: (Grundy, 1993), Implementation forces analysis is the diagnosis and assessment of enabling and restraining forces that have an impact on a project. IMF analysis is a tool which brings to the surface the underlying forces which may pull a exacting change forward or which may avoid advancement, or even move the change backwards. These forces can be independently identified as enablers or constraints (Jessen, 1998). But neither set of forces can be adequately acknowledged devoid of first specifying the purpose of the strategy implementation. Put simply, enablers are the influences on the project which makes it easier to put into operation, and the constraints are those influences making it more complicated. IMF analysis should not be used merely to replicate, but also to re-shape strategy implementation. At the diagnosis stage not only should it be used to map the on hand pattern of implementation forces, but also to make out what pattern of forces is required in order to move the projects forward at an acceptable pace (Quinn, 2000). In this paper I have discussed the concerns regarding implementation of strategies through projects. Strategy implementations form an increasingly important and high profile application of project management. At this level major strategies often call for a somewhat different mix of tools to traditional project management tracts (Hamel, 1996). Project management needs purposeful planning and achievement to produce the circumstances for achievement and put in place the strategy, management, objectives developments, abilities, systems, subject resolution, and structure to straight and develop the dynamic nature of project effort (Kanter, 2002). If work nowadays is inclusive in the course of projects, as is definitely the case, then working smarter on projects will certainly help an organization to convene head-on, whatever planned and prepared confronts may approach its way. Strategic planning is aimed at dealing with the enormous indecision and constant change that modern organizations find in the environments to which they must adapt (Jessen, 1998). A market niche is typically a transient thing. So this whole discussion leads to the conclusion that strategy development through project management is an effective tool that was popular in old strategy development techniques and also used at present for the development of strategic plans. References 1. Ansoff, H.I. 1984. “Implanting Strategic Management”; Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 2. Grundy, A. N., 1993. “Implementing Strategic Change”; Kogan. 3. Hamel, G. 1996. "Strategy as revolution", Harvard Business Review, pp.69-82. 4. Hofstede, G. 1994. “Cultures and organizations”; London: Harper Collins. 5. Jessen, S.A. 1998. “Practical Project Leadership (3rd ed.)”; Stockholm: Scandinavian University Press. 6. Kanter, R.M. 2002. "Strategy as improvisational theatre", Sloan Management Review, No.Winter, pp.76-81. 7. Kerzner, H. 2000. “Applied project management: best practices on implementation”; New York: Wiley. 8. McElroy, W. 1995. “Strategic Change through Project Management”; APM. 9. Quinn, J. B.2000. “Strategies for Change Logical incrementalism”; Richard D Irwin, Illinois. 10. Rumelt, R. P., D. Schendel and D. J. Teece. 1991. “Strategic management and economics”; Strategic Management Journal, 12, Winter Special Issue, pp. 5-30. 11. Voropajev, V.I. 1998. “Project management development for transitional economies (Russian case study)”; International Journal of Project Management, 16 (5), P.P. 283-292. 12. Wiliamson, P. 1999. "Strategy as option on the future", Sloan Management Review, pp.117-26. Read More