We have all experienced it.

The most brilliant and enlightened strategy fails. It is one thing to formulate it: it is quite another to implement it.

Lawrence Hrebiniak, a management professor with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania writes that we should not be surprised. Making strategy work, he writes, is more difficult than strategy making. Sad as it is, managers are trained to plan, not execute. Execution is a process. It takes far longer than formulation. It cannot be accomplished with a few actions steps. It involves more people and to be effective it requires change.

Execution’s management challenge, the professor argues, requires attention to overcoming eight obstacles:

1. Models must be developed to guide executive decisions and actions.
2. The creation of a strategy effects its execution and should be detailed.
3. Change – that includes culture change – must be managed effectively.
4. Power and influence must be understood and used for strategy execution.
5. Organizational structures must be fostered that facilitate accountability and information sharing and coordination.
6. Effective controls and feedback mechanisms must be developed.
7. Creation of an execution-supportive culture must be created.
8. Leadership must have an execution bias.

The book concludes with an insightful merger and acquisition case study. Its insights into the execution of this challenge more than justifies the time invested studying Hrebiniak’s comprehensive process model contained in this valuable volume. ( )