ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some root causes why strategy implementation is so hard. Some of these root causes deal with the quality of the strategy itself, the others deal with the topic of implementation. It provides a new model that tackles many of these issues. This model consists of three building blocks and is called the Strategy-Alignment-Commitment model. The chapter argues that strategy implementation is about creating alignment and commitment. Strategy implementation only succeeds if a company has a well-formulated strategy in the first place. Strategy implementation is not about delegating the bits and pieces of a strategy to the functional managers, so that the marketing manager tackles the marketing issues and the operations manager manages the operational issues. Effective strategy implementation only occurs if the quality of the strategy is high. The concept of strategic alignment is well known in the strategic management literature, the concept of commitment is a rather neglected aspect of strategy implementation.
