Managing strategic consensus: the foundation of effective implementation

Executive Overview A frequent complaint of senior executives is that middle and operating managers fail to take the actions necessary to implement strategy. As one top manager told us. “It's been rather easy for us to decide where we wanted to go. The hard part is to get the organization to act on the new priorities.” Implementation problems of this type are often the result of poor middle management understanding and commitment to strategy. In our research we've found that relatively few middle managers articulate the same goals as their superiors. More troublesome, other researchers have found that middle managers who disagree with strategic initiatives frequently work against their implementation. This article examines an approach to implementation that focuses on the level of strategic understanding and commitment shared by managers within the organization. A framework identifying four categories of strategic consensus is introduced and used as the basis for analyzing differences in how managers perceive organizational priorities. A series of examples show the effects of such differences on strategy implementation and on management's ability to change direction. The article offers a practical approach for closing the gap between strategy development and execution.