Strategy implementation is concerned with the managerial exercise of putting a freshly chosen strategy into place. It is a procedure that puts plans and strategies into action to reach desired goals.
Policies and operating procedures aid the task of implementing the strategy in several ways:
- Providing guidance: New or revised policies and procedures provide top-down guidance to operating managers, supervisors, and employees regarding how certain: things need to be done and what behavior is expected.
- Aligning actions and behavior with strategy: Policies and operating procedures places limits on independent action and channeling individual and group efforts along the intended path.
- Enforcing consistency: Policies and operating procedures help enforce needed consistency in how particular strategy-critical activities are performed in geographically scattered operating units.
- Changing the corporate culture: Instituting new policies and procedures invariably alter the internal work climate. Policy changing process can be a powerful lever for changing the corporate culture in ways that produce a stronger fit with the new strategy.
Company managers, therefore, need to be inventive in devising policies and practices that can provide vital support to effective strategy implementation and execution.
