http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2008/11/16/strategy-and-the-challenge-of-implementing-change/ A focus on what leadership is paid to do Wed, 8 Feb 2012 07:55:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2008/11/16/strategy-and-the-challenge-of-implementing-change/#comment-1223 karl murray Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:12:57 +0000 http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/?p=216#comment-1223 I have found that one of the major flaws in strategy development is that the starting point is often too obscure and unfocused on the particular change that would make the difference and that is required to deliver the rest of the strategy. Public authorities suffer from a particular interface with political imperatives that makes for incongruity throughout the development process. The major flaw here is what i term the 'the principle of serving too many masters'. Political members want to be elected so they don't support the strategy that could be unpopular though very good chance of effecting the sort of changes that is required to produce the outcome they seek. Officers, senior officers in particular, are afraid to take the sorts of risks that is often required to bring about effective change (all change brings with it risks). So they 'play' safe and have discourse about being 'risk avert...challenging and robust systems, policies and procedures' much of which usually means procrastination, waiting for the political wind/temperature to change. The workforce, having been through so many 'poorly managed changes', become hardened and sceptical of the efficacy of any such change process. The strategy, often, then gets lost; the vision even more obscure and the delivery having less impact where it is most needed. Finally, strategies too often change before the previous approach has had time to bed down, to see if indeed it is working....the some short time scale for 'making it happen' often leads to rash decision making and fail to take people with the changes. First and fundamental mistake in strategy delivery.... it is my view that 'people make systems work and not systems make people work'. I have found that one of the major flaws in strategy development is that the starting point is often too obscure and unfocused on the particular change that would make the difference and that is required to deliver the rest of the strategy. Public authorities suffer from a particular interface with political imperatives that makes for incongruity throughout the development process. The major flaw here is what i term the ‘the principle of serving too many masters’. Political members want to be elected so they don’t support the strategy that could be unpopular though very good chance of effecting the sort of changes that is required to produce the outcome they seek. Officers, senior officers in particular, are afraid to take the sorts of risks that is often required to bring about effective change (all change brings with it risks). So they ‘play’ safe and have discourse about being ‘risk avert…challenging and robust systems, policies and procedures’ much of which usually means procrastination, waiting for the political wind/temperature to change. The workforce, having been through so many ‘poorly managed changes’, become hardened and sceptical of the efficacy of any such change process. The strategy, often, then gets lost; the vision even more obscure and the delivery having less impact where it is most needed. Finally, strategies too often change before the previous approach has had time to bed down, to see if indeed it is working….the some short time scale for ‘making it happen’ often leads to rash decision making and fail to take people with the changes. First and fundamental mistake in strategy delivery…. it is my view that ‘people make systems work and not systems make people work’.

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