Formulating strategy is one thing. Executing it throughout the entire organization... well, that's the really hard part. Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, Larry Hrebiniak offers a comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world.



Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize, and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies. He offers a systematic roadmap for execution that encompasses every key success factor: organizational structure, coordination, information sharing, incentives, controls, change management, culture, and the role of power and influence in the execution process.



Making Strategy Work concludes with a start-to-finish case study showing how to use Hrebiniak's ideas to address one of today's most difficult business execution challenges: ensuring the success of a merger or acquisition. The advice on making M&A strategies work justifies the addition of this book to any execution toolkit.



* Building the capabilities and culture you'll need to execute

* How to align your organization's skills, resources, and culture around the strategies you're pursuing .

* Integrating long-term strategy with short-term operations

* Why managing the short-term is crucial to the success of long-term strategy

* Ensuring robust coordination... up, down, and sideways

* Effective information sharing and cooperation: bringing coherence and focus to execution

* Managing change, including culture change

* Avoiding "speed traps," resistance, and other change-related problems that hurt execution



A Comprehensive Roadmap and Process Model for Executing Strategy



* Beyond "war stories": detailed, integrated solutions for delivering on strategy



* Empirically based real data from managers facing and solving real execution problems



* Effective structure, coordination, incentives, controls, and more



* Leading change to build a "strategy-supportive" organizational culture



* Includes a start-to-finish case study on M&A execution.



Strategy formulation is difficult. Execution: now, that's even harder. But without execution, strategy is worthless. Making Strategy Work is the definitive start-to-finish guide to successfully executing your business strategy.



Author Lawrence G. Hrebiniak has consulted on execution and strategy with companies ranging from GM to Chase Manhattan, Aventis to GE (where he facilitated many of Jack Welch's legendary Work-Outs). He presents integrated processes and powerful insights for overcoming even the toughest obstacles to success.



You'll learn how to put in place the competencies to execute your strategy short-term operations with long-term plans... define responsibilities, accountability, incentives, and controls more effectively... improve coordination at "ground level" and throughout the enterprise... manage change and culture effectively... above all, shape and lead your organization to support strategy instead of resisting it.



About the Author

Dr. Lawrence Hrebiniak is a professor in the Department of Management of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a member of the Wharton faculty since 1976, and currently teaches courses in strategic management and strategy implementation in the Wharton M.B.A. and Executive Education programs. He held several managerial positions in industry prior to entering academia, and is a past president of the Organization Theory Division of the Academy of Management. For over two years, he was one of five Wharton faculty providing commentaries on the Wharton Management Report, a daily program on the Financial News Network.



His consulting activities and executive development programs focus on strategy implementation, the formulation of strategy, and organizational design, both inside and outside the U.S. Dr. Hrebiniak's clients have included Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Chemical Bank, Isuzu (Japan), Weyerhauser, Dun & Bradstreet, DuPont, Management Centre (Europe), the Social Security Administration, First American Bankshares, General Motors (U.S., Brazil, Japan, Venezuela), Chase Manhattan, Studio Amrosetti (Milan), and GE.



Dr. Hrebiniak's current research is concerned primarily with strategy implementation, especially the relationships among strategy, structure and performance. He is also interested in strategic adaptation as organizations change over time to remain competitive. He has authored four books, including Implementing Strategy (PHPTR 1984) and The We-Force in Management (Jossey-Bass, Inc. 1994).



Table of contents:



CHAPTER 1 STRATEGY EXECUTION IS THE KEY

CHAPTER 2 OVERVIEW AND MODEL: MAKING STRATEGY WORK

CHAPTER 3 THE PATH TO SUCCESSFUL EXECUTION: GOOD STRATEGY COMES FIRST

CHAPTER 4 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND EXECUTION CHAPTER 5 MANAGING INTEGRATION EFFECTIVE

COORDINATION AND INFORMATION SHARING

CHAPTER 6 INCENTIVES AND CONTROLS: SUPPORTING

AND REINFORCING EXECUTION

CHAPTER 7 MANAGING CHANGE

CHAPTER 8 MANAGING CULTURE AND CULTURE CHANGE

CHAPTER 9 POWER, INFLUENCE, AND EXECUTION

CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY AND APPLICATION: MAKING MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS WORK

APPENDIX

INDEX