Feature
It would not be a stretch to say that many of the problems with effective strategy execution are well known, as are the solutions. That said, leaders often fall short of doing what they know will contribute to success.
Miles Zachary, Harbert Associate Professor of Management and Dean’s Fellow offers the following thoughts.
What are you missing? T he gameshow “Family Feud” pits two families against each other to name the most popular answers to survey questions. The host, Steve Harvey, begins each segment with, “We asked 100 people this question … and the top responses are on the board.” Then contestants attempt to guess the top response. If we were to play Family Feud, Business Edition and ask 100 random executives about the factors that facilitate strategic change, most could guess the top responses. And organizational culture would likely be right up there. In fact, a 2012 Deloitte study asked 303 corporate executives a set of questions to learn what factors determine business success. “94% of executives believe workplace culture is key.” Healthy organizational culture (1) aligns employees with company mission, vision, and values, (2) facilitates employee commitment and engagement, and (3) helps employees understand and process strategy and structure. In other words, culture determines if and how work gets done. It’s indispensable to formulating and implementing strategic change. From a McKinsey white paper: “Healthy cultures enable organizations to adapt. In a world where the one constant is change, culture becomes even more important because organizations with high-performing cultures thrive on change. The converse also holds true: unhealthy cultures do not respond well to change. Our research shows that 70 percent of transformations fail, and 70 percent of those failures are due to culture-related issues."
So, why do so many executives seem to grapple with developing a culture that facilitates strategy execution? There are two important answers to this question: voice and buy-in. Employee voice reflects the way people communicate their views within an organization, often with the hope of influencing what decisions are made. Voice is important to strategic change because executives and other leaders often solicit the expertise and opinions of employees as they seek to formulate and implement strategic changes. Indeed, many strategic planning sessions encourage employees to “speak up” and voice their opinions to guide effective changes. Unfortunately, employees can be reluctant to share their thoughts about the state of certain activities and their opinions on how to improve them. It’s tall puppy syndrome — people resist actions that make them stand out. From an employee's perspective, it is dangerous to volunteer an opinion (even when solicited) for fear that it might have negative consequences. Employee buy-in reflects the level of commitment toward a company’s strategic goals, including changes to those goals and how a company works toward them. Without employee buy-in to strategic changes, executives have little hope of successfully implementing change. For most of us, change is scary. Scholars William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser coined the term “status quo bias” — the tendency to maintain a current state rather than changing to an alternative state. The odd thing is that such bias persists even when the alter- native state would be an improvement. “Better the devil you know…”
Harbert Magazine, Spring 2025 35
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