Product Description

"Formulating strategy is one thing. Executing it throughout the entire organization... well, that's the really hard part. Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it - and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, Larry Hrebiniak offers a comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world.

Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize, and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies. He offers a systematic roadmap for execution that encompasses every key success factor: organizational structure, coordination, information sharing, incentives, controls, change management, culture, and the role of power and influence in the execution process.

Making Strategy Work concludes with a start-to-finish case study showing how to use Hrebiniak's ideas to address one of today's most difficult business execution challenges: ensuring the success of a merger or acquisition. The advice on making M&A strategies work justifies the addition of this book to any execution toolkit.

• Building the capabilities and culture you'll need to execute
• How to align your organization's skills, resources, and culture around the strategies you're pursuing
• Integrating long-term strategy with short-term operations
• Why managing the short-term is crucial to the success of long-term strategy
• Ensuring robust coordination... up, down, and sideways
• Effective information sharing and cooperation: bringing coherence and focus to execution
• Managing change, including culture change
• Avoiding "speed traps," resistance, and other change-related problems that hurt execution

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32298 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

Review

From Kirkus Reports, February 10, 2005 Volume 2, Issue 1

Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change
By: Lawrence G. Hrebiniak
Publisher: Wharton School Publishing
Pub Date: January 2005

In what could be an excellent companion piece to either branding book mentioned this month, Wharton professor Hrebiniak deconstructs the grand theories and explores what it takes to work in the real world. He starts by discussing what doesn’t work–when managers dream up ambitious scenarios but leave the execution to their underlings, things are bound to go wrong. In other words: formula is easy; execution is hard. Ownership, according to Hrebiniak, is the key to success, and he moves clearly through the many steps of taking strategy from the theoretical to the concrete. There are sections devoted to all the common pitfalls: information sharing, providing appropriate incentives, and managing culture change. Case studies of big corporations and the challenges they met or flubbed provide a real-world look at the stakes involved. The author also provides an examination of power and influence as they relate to execution, and a section that demonstrates how his theories could be applied to recent M&As. In all, a mercifully cut-and-dry, clear-eyed view of one way in which businesses can succeed or fail.

From the Back Cover
Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it -- and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, leading consultant and Wharton professor Lawrence Hrebiniak offers the first comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world. Drawing on his unsurpassed experience, Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize, and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies. Next, he offers a systematic roadmap for execution that encompasses every key success factor: organizational structure, coordination, information sharing, incentives, controls, change management, culture, and the role of power and influence in your business. Making Strategy Work concludes with a start-to-finish case study showing how to use Hrebeniak's ideas to address one of today's most difficult business execution challenges: ensuring the success of a merger or acquisition.

About the Author

About the Author

Dr. Lawrence Hrebiniak is a professor in the Department of Management of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a member of the Wharton faculty since 1976, and currently teaches courses in strategic management and strategy implementation in the Wharton M.B.A. and Executive Education programs. He held several managerial positions in industry prior to entering academia, and is a past president of the Organization Theory Division of the Academy of Management. For over two years, he was one of five Wharton faculty providing commentaries on the Wharton Management Report, a daily program on the Financial News Network.

His consulting activities and executive development programs focus on strategy implementation, the formulation of strategy, and organizational design, both inside and outside the U.S. Dr. Hrebiniak's clients have included Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Chemical Bank, Isuzu (Japan), Weyerhauser, Dun & Bradstreet, DuPont, Management Centre (Europe), the Social Security Administration, First American Bankshares, General Motors (U.S., Brazil, Japan, Venezuela), Chase Manhattan, Studio Amrosetti (Milan), and GE.

Dr. Hrebiniak's current research is concerned primarily with strategy implementation, especially the relationships among strategy, structure and performance. He is also interested in strategic adaptation as organizations change over time to remain competitive. He has authored four books, including Implementing Strategy (PHPTR 1984) and The We-Force in Management (Jossey-Bass, Inc. 1994).

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

practical
As you should expect from a book that claims to 'make strategy work' this book for me does exactly that. Make it work. It borrows principles and concepts from other major works over the recent years, like Good to Great from Jim Collins and elaborates on them in several chapters, most of them focusing on singular subjects that prevent the strategy from working: culture, leadership, behavior, structure etc.

I personally like the mix of conceptual models and basic tips and tricks, but this can also lead to a middle of the road book that the more practical-minded or the more academic might not fancy. Take your pick.

Solid book
Keeping implementation in mind when creating strategy is a sound strategy. Packed with excellent case studies, Making Strategy Work is a fine guide for managers and leaders to get things done. I recommend this book along with Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, starting with the "Who" then moving on to the "What".

What makes strategy really work ?
Considering the high ranking and the established name of Warton School, I bought this book. Whether you like this book or not, depends mainly on what you are looking for.

The author says, making strategy work is more difficult, than finding a suitable strategy for the business you are in. Following my own experiences I doubt this. How many companies do we really know, that have a sound strategy that can be simply expressed and proofed right by many years of succes? Go to the shopfloor and ask your employees simple things as e.g. why your customers buy from you and what your business is or should be about. Although the author does not focus on how to build a strategy and covers the aspects of strategy implementation, a good strategy will first of all decide, whether any implementation has a chance for success.

A good strategy gives you answers on:

1.) Who are we and where are we actually (not only internal view) ?
2.) Where do we go ?
3.) Why will we be succesfull ?

Answering this questions will cope with the core question of strategic marketing as positioning and differentiation as well. Implementing any longterm strategy is mainly dedicated to leadership, preliminary people development around core competencies and step by step project management by having easy and consistant measures defined.

There are to many basic statemants in this book and definitions - just common sense. Focus on analysing your current external position and the internal view, the strategy definition and the strategy implementation will be much easier. Change has mostly to do with communication and telling the story as it is, the rest relays on your leadership and how convincing the need for change is. Eliminate the "jerks" and develop the "right" people and your strategy will move forward. The question about the "right" people is linked to change management and leadership, but non of this books will provide you the answer of this question.

Even though softfactors are important, any book about making strategy work should first of all rise a few questions what preliminary answers on important questions need to be on hand?

Best Regards,
Oliver