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That formidable string of issues listed up yonderways can be pared down yield a tidy little “To-Do” list – but recognizing problems and tackling problems are two very different things. The chore of thoroughly managing barriers to strategy is an intimidating one, and given that, the rarity of effective strategy execution is really none too surprising. Fortunately, every one of those issues is within the power of HR to conquer.
From a big-picture perspective, there are four vital tasks that all businesses must accomplish. These four jobs, when properly fulfilled, add up to the bare-bones work of strategy implementation, and they are:
1. Helping employees to understand the strategy.
Not only must employees understand the strategic direction itself, they must also comprehend the reason for the strategy, as well as the driving forces behind it. Employees are the cogs around which the gears of business turn. If the employees don’t understand where the strategy is headed, they will be incapable of realizing their full potential in aiding the strategy implementation.
2. Augmenting employee commitment to the strategy.
Changes in strategy mean changes for people on an individual level, and individual change tends to mean frustration, disappointment, and challenge. If an employee is going to put in any extra effort towards propelling a conceived strategy to fruition, he must genuinely be given to believe that, in the long run, the end product will be worth the difficult sacrifices made in order to implement the strategy.
3. Streamlining local effort with the strategy.
Though invariably all employees must be on board for understanding and committing to the strategy, this in and of itself is not enough. Implementing a strategy means legitimately changing work production. In order to achieve the business strategy, all off-strategy work must terminate and all on-strategy work must proceed with renewed urgency and dedication.
4. Inducing cross-system cooperation.
The final and most important step in strategy implementation is that of realigning departmental relationships within the system. Implementing strategy means carving deeper relationships between inter-dependent organizational units, such as sales and manufacturing, or customer service and distribution. This last job is as challenging as it is critical, because it demands that employees within discrete work units learn to share and interact across the traditional boundaries of their job descriptions.
This system of change as organized into four jobs is rather unique among most designs for strategic HR. Where many plans focus in on how HR can appeal to, motivate, and enrich the contribution of the individual, the Four Jobs system recognizes the work that must be done on all three tiers of organization, from the individual to the work unit to the department as a whole. Implementation of strategy is an all-encompassing procedure, demanding change at all levels of the business’s social system.
Naturally, strategy implementation doesn’t always quite follow the nice linear path laid out above. The first two jobs, however, do remain distinctly foundational, and without their proper groundwork of understanding, jobs three and four are mind-boggling to approach. Jobs one and two, meanwhile, are certainly inter-related. When employees are lead to fully understand the nature and logic of the business strategy, they will feel entirely more compelled to work towards achieving it – particularly when they can see what they stand to gain from the change.
All this talk of strategy, of course, is worthless if it doesn’t at some point translate over into action. Therein lies the purpose of job three. Regardless of employee understanding and enthusiasm, if there’s no change in work at the local level, the strategy will never achieve full implementation. Changing work means not only altering the actual processes of local work units, but also improving the ways in which they go about completing their tasks. This is not simply a job for management – the workers themselves must affirmatively be included in the process of formulating solutions. Working employees enjoy a firsthand insight which upper-level management simply does not have the ability to possess.
Fulfilling a company-wide strategy requires that change be made not only within individual departments, but also in the ways in which those departments interact with one another. Job four focuses on adjusting the relationships between different business processes, improving how they work together and accomplish their aims. The implementation of a new strategy almost always demands such cross-system changes, but rarely do organizations actually take steps to make these shifts. Granted, it’s pretty hard work.
And why is job four so much more difficult than job one? Proceeding through the steps of strategy implementation, there is a distinct trend of increasing difficulty. The reasons for this are several:
- Technically speaking, HR can accomplish jobs one and two without really partnering with the line organization (and it certainly often tries to) – but HR could not possibly hope to achieve jobs three and four on its own. To really hold weight over what work is done and how it is completed, HR must have an agreeable client who wants the offered help.
- As jobs one and two suggest, it is one thing to guide people in understanding something, and another thing entirely to motivate them to take action with what they’ve learned. This, of course, is one of HR’s specialties – but though HR might be pro at instilling such changes within its own field of the business, it should be careful not to do so otherwise without line manager involvement.
- As important as it is that employees understand the strategy, as in job one, it is exponentially more critical that they apply what they know, as through jobs three and four. Unfortunately, this is where traditional training begins to grow less effective, and different, less conventional approaches become necessary.
- Job three does not apply merely to the individual – it is a sweeping movement throughout entire work units, driving a collective change in focus, work habits, and processes. To successfully accomplish such a far-flung task, HR must work closely with line managers, often in situations which are out of HR’s usual comfort zone.
The Real Role Of Human Resources
Having established that these four jobs form the core work of strategy implementation, the question now remains: exactly whose work is it? Certainly HR has a necessary role in helping the business to address each of these jobs, but it is not the place of HR to carry them all out. HR should follow its own initiative to complete those tasks it can, and a solid partnership with the executive line will see to the rest. Put simply, HR must establish itself as the driving force behind the strategy implementation effort.
On the flip side, though it is within the ability of HR to fulfill many of the requirements of jobs one and two, the executive line should be far from uninvolved. Employees, in all honesty, would rather be lectured and inspired by line leaders than they would by HR. HR, meanwhile, has the power to generate opportunities to bring employees together with managers and executives, leading from behind the scenes.
Management will have the greatest success in implementing strategy given a:
- Thorough understanding of the strategic objectives
- Willingness to make sacrifices in order to achieve the strategy
- Common view regarding what parts of the organization must change
- Commitment to a systematic plan of employee management, support, and inter-departmental relations that will cultivate efficient execution of the strategy
If any of these elements are deficient, it is the job of HR professionals to urge the management group to address these issues and suggest means of bringing the group into greater accord.
Checklist For Strategy Implementation Success
Putting together all of the pieces, here is a final set of guidelines to HR professionals aiming to crack down on transforming strategy ideas into actuality.
1. Look at the big-picture business problems, not just HR bustle.
Be down-to-earth and talk to people about what’s really going on. Ask a line executive what problems are weighing on him – chances are good he’ll launch into a spiel on customer response time, bottlenecks, production costs, waste, sales slumps, and the like, not the cost of new hires or lack of corporate values. Don’t worry too much about what strategic problems HR professionals should “bother with” getting involved in, whether they’re “HR-type” priority or not. The important thing is that HR is helping the organization to make changes, and any point that falls in line with the strategy is worth HR’s time.
2. Gauge HR in terms of business results.
HR often deals with the difficult-to-quantify, yes – but it’s worthwhile to encourage HR to be more market-driven. HR will be more successful in earning respect within the company of it can contribute what the line executives need, want, and will appreciate.
3. Buddy up with the top line executives.
A good partnership includes two parties which are working to achieve a common goal. HR and the executive line should both be open to receiving feedback with regards to how they are helping one another accomplish the strategy objectives. This sort of relationship operates far more effectively than the unfortunate habit of HR simply dictating coldly to the line functions what the problems are and what “must be done” to solve them.
4. Be obstinate in building alliances.
Job four is pivotal – there must be inter-departmental collaboration and change in order for strategy implementation to succeed. The different business processes, so accustomed to their separate and competitive ways, may very will dig their heels in and resist the building of cross-system relationships, but HR professionals should stick to their guns and manhandle the company into cooperation.
5. Get savvy about business change.
HR professionals should be exactly that – professional. They, more than anyone else, should know their stuff when it comes to what’s going on in and around the business. Nothing is more valuable than a thorough understanding of how HR must operate. This article itself is a mere sampler of what HR is responsible for knowing.
6. Branch out for support.
Don’t shy away from hiring outside partners in order to help HR compile and carry out a method of tying in organization to strategy. “Hiring out” is not a sign of weakness or incompetence – on the contrary, it shows business maturity in seeking diversity and creativity in order to solve problems. Oftentimes HR is too far buried within its own issues to see clearly, and an outside perspective can offer a crisp new form of insight.
From a big-picture perspective, there are four vital tasks that all businesses must accomplish. These four jobs, when properly fulfilled, add up to the bare-bones work of strategy implementation, and they are:
1. Helping employees to understand the strategy.
Not only must employees understand the strategic direction itself, they must also comprehend the reason for the strategy, as well as the driving forces behind it. Employees are the cogs around which the gears of business turn. If the employees don’t understand where the strategy is headed, they will be incapable of realizing their full potential in aiding the strategy implementation.
2. Augmenting employee commitment to the strategy.
Changes in strategy mean changes for people on an individual level, and individual change tends to mean frustration, disappointment, and challenge. If an employee is going to put in any extra effort towards propelling a conceived strategy to fruition, he must genuinely be given to believe that, in the long run, the end product will be worth the difficult sacrifices made in order to implement the strategy.
3. Streamlining local effort with the strategy.
Though invariably all employees must be on board for understanding and committing to the strategy, this in and of itself is not enough. Implementing a strategy means legitimately changing work production. In order to achieve the business strategy, all off-strategy work must terminate and all on-strategy work must proceed with renewed urgency and dedication.
4. Inducing cross-system cooperation.
The final and most important step in strategy implementation is that of realigning departmental relationships within the system. Implementing strategy means carving deeper relationships between inter-dependent organizational units, such as sales and manufacturing, or customer service and distribution. This last job is as challenging as it is critical, because it demands that employees within discrete work units learn to share and interact across the traditional boundaries of their job descriptions.
This system of change as organized into four jobs is rather unique among most designs for strategic HR. Where many plans focus in on how HR can appeal to, motivate, and enrich the contribution of the individual, the Four Jobs system recognizes the work that must be done on all three tiers of organization, from the individual to the work unit to the department as a whole. Implementation of strategy is an all-encompassing procedure, demanding change at all levels of the business’s social system.
Naturally, strategy implementation doesn’t always quite follow the nice linear path laid out above. The first two jobs, however, do remain distinctly foundational, and without their proper groundwork of understanding, jobs three and four are mind-boggling to approach. Jobs one and two, meanwhile, are certainly inter-related. When employees are lead to fully understand the nature and logic of the business strategy, they will feel entirely more compelled to work towards achieving it – particularly when they can see what they stand to gain from the change.
All this talk of strategy, of course, is worthless if it doesn’t at some point translate over into action. Therein lies the purpose of job three. Regardless of employee understanding and enthusiasm, if there’s no change in work at the local level, the strategy will never achieve full implementation. Changing work means not only altering the actual processes of local work units, but also improving the ways in which they go about completing their tasks. This is not simply a job for management – the workers themselves must affirmatively be included in the process of formulating solutions. Working employees enjoy a firsthand insight which upper-level management simply does not have the ability to possess.
Fulfilling a company-wide strategy requires that change be made not only within individual departments, but also in the ways in which those departments interact with one another. Job four focuses on adjusting the relationships between different business processes, improving how they work together and accomplish their aims. The implementation of a new strategy almost always demands such cross-system changes, but rarely do organizations actually take steps to make these shifts. Granted, it’s pretty hard work.
And why is job four so much more difficult than job one? Proceeding through the steps of strategy implementation, there is a distinct trend of increasing difficulty. The reasons for this are several:
- Technically speaking, HR can accomplish jobs one and two without really partnering with the line organization (and it certainly often tries to) – but HR could not possibly hope to achieve jobs three and four on its own. To really hold weight over what work is done and how it is completed, HR must have an agreeable client who wants the offered help.
- As jobs one and two suggest, it is one thing to guide people in understanding something, and another thing entirely to motivate them to take action with what they’ve learned. This, of course, is one of HR’s specialties – but though HR might be pro at instilling such changes within its own field of the business, it should be careful not to do so otherwise without line manager involvement.
- As important as it is that employees understand the strategy, as in job one, it is exponentially more critical that they apply what they know, as through jobs three and four. Unfortunately, this is where traditional training begins to grow less effective, and different, less conventional approaches become necessary.
- Job three does not apply merely to the individual – it is a sweeping movement throughout entire work units, driving a collective change in focus, work habits, and processes. To successfully accomplish such a far-flung task, HR must work closely with line managers, often in situations which are out of HR’s usual comfort zone.
The Real Role Of Human Resources
Having established that these four jobs form the core work of strategy implementation, the question now remains: exactly whose work is it? Certainly HR has a necessary role in helping the business to address each of these jobs, but it is not the place of HR to carry them all out. HR should follow its own initiative to complete those tasks it can, and a solid partnership with the executive line will see to the rest. Put simply, HR must establish itself as the driving force behind the strategy implementation effort.
On the flip side, though it is within the ability of HR to fulfill many of the requirements of jobs one and two, the executive line should be far from uninvolved. Employees, in all honesty, would rather be lectured and inspired by line leaders than they would by HR. HR, meanwhile, has the power to generate opportunities to bring employees together with managers and executives, leading from behind the scenes.
Management will have the greatest success in implementing strategy given a:
- Thorough understanding of the strategic objectives
- Willingness to make sacrifices in order to achieve the strategy
- Common view regarding what parts of the organization must change
- Commitment to a systematic plan of employee management, support, and inter-departmental relations that will cultivate efficient execution of the strategy
If any of these elements are deficient, it is the job of HR professionals to urge the management group to address these issues and suggest means of bringing the group into greater accord.
Checklist For Strategy Implementation Success
Putting together all of the pieces, here is a final set of guidelines to HR professionals aiming to crack down on transforming strategy ideas into actuality.
1. Look at the big-picture business problems, not just HR bustle.
Be down-to-earth and talk to people about what’s really going on. Ask a line executive what problems are weighing on him – chances are good he’ll launch into a spiel on customer response time, bottlenecks, production costs, waste, sales slumps, and the like, not the cost of new hires or lack of corporate values. Don’t worry too much about what strategic problems HR professionals should “bother with” getting involved in, whether they’re “HR-type” priority or not. The important thing is that HR is helping the organization to make changes, and any point that falls in line with the strategy is worth HR’s time.
2. Gauge HR in terms of business results.
HR often deals with the difficult-to-quantify, yes – but it’s worthwhile to encourage HR to be more market-driven. HR will be more successful in earning respect within the company of it can contribute what the line executives need, want, and will appreciate.
3. Buddy up with the top line executives.
A good partnership includes two parties which are working to achieve a common goal. HR and the executive line should both be open to receiving feedback with regards to how they are helping one another accomplish the strategy objectives. This sort of relationship operates far more effectively than the unfortunate habit of HR simply dictating coldly to the line functions what the problems are and what “must be done” to solve them.
4. Be obstinate in building alliances.
Job four is pivotal – there must be inter-departmental collaboration and change in order for strategy implementation to succeed. The different business processes, so accustomed to their separate and competitive ways, may very will dig their heels in and resist the building of cross-system relationships, but HR professionals should stick to their guns and manhandle the company into cooperation.
5. Get savvy about business change.
HR professionals should be exactly that – professional. They, more than anyone else, should know their stuff when it comes to what’s going on in and around the business. Nothing is more valuable than a thorough understanding of how HR must operate. This article itself is a mere sampler of what HR is responsible for knowing.
6. Branch out for support.
Don’t shy away from hiring outside partners in order to help HR compile and carry out a method of tying in organization to strategy. “Hiring out” is not a sign of weakness or incompetence – on the contrary, it shows business maturity in seeking diversity and creativity in order to solve problems. Oftentimes HR is too far buried within its own issues to see clearly, and an outside perspective can offer a crisp new form of insight.
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