By Lynda Silsbee, CPT, SPHR
After countless client projects involving strategy formulation and execution, I have learned many things—one of the most important being that having a strategic plan does not mean the strategy can or will be executed. Failure to execute the strategy is the reason strategy fails but the most important lesson is that one’s organizational culture either enables or disables the ability to execute … to borrow a quote from Peter Drucker, “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast!” Culture is so powerful that this quote was posted in the War Room at Ford Motor Company.
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As an HR professional, I know that HR can impact strategic execution and culture in a big way.
The problem is the leadership team creates the strategic plan and hands it over to managers and frontline employees to execute. What happens between leadership and management is the problem.
There is no in-depth explanation of the strategy and, if there is, it sounds almost like a foreign language, loaded with words like—stakeholder value, profitable growth, and creating value for customers.