ABSTRACT

Nowadays, a frequentlymade assertion is that implementation of strategy is harder than strategy formulation. This assertionwas supported by evidence from a survey of 11 national libraries, including those in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States (Chalmers 1997). The most serious implementation problems appeared to be setting budget priorities in line with strategic priorities, and making changes in the competencies of staff and managers if required for the implementation of a strategy. Two critical sets of resources (financial and human) were not easily aligned with strategy. Summing up the significance of the survey, the analytical aspects of strategy are easier than strategic implementation. Implementing strategy is not only hard to do, it is often unsatisfactory as well.

A 2007 review of civil service capability in the UK made the following generalization (Capability Reviews Team 2007: 44): ‘The reviews found excellent practice in setting direction and in developing outcome-focused strategy, but poorer performance on translating this consistently into delivery’. At the present time, there are civil servants and public services managers in a

number of countries who are struggling with implementation of strategy. They may have a sophisticated or a rudimentary knowledge of how strategic planning is supposed to work on paper, but they know successful implementation is not easily achieved. They wonder what they need to do to make strategic implementation work in their own organization with its specific history, culture, habits, pressures and problems. So, to some degree, they are strugglingwith

not only understanding the theory of strategic planning but, probably more importantly, they want to understand how they can deliver it in practice. In private sector oriented management books the concern with implemen-

tation emerged in the 1970s, when the name ‘strategic management’ started to displace the earlier name of ‘strategic planning’. Until then, books on corporate strategy focused on formulating strategies and gave little attention to the learning that could occur during implementation or the need to address conflicting interests and resistance to new strategies. It was later in the 1980s and 1990s that there was more appreciation of the importance of the work of turning strategic plans into concrete action. One response to this might be to call for the management of implementation, beginning with the planning in detail of the strategic actions, responsibilities for action, budgets and the timing of actions. It could also require supporting the implementation of strategic action with communication by leaders, training, targets and rewards. For example, Hussey (1999) gave the following advice for managing strategic implementation: