Executing Strategy - Overview

In an industry marked by turbulence, companies must consistently practice the discipline of execution. A great strategy without an effective implementation goes nowhere; a good enough strategy, but well implemented delivers results. In today’s world, rapid and effective execution is critical. Understanding how to link together strategy, operations (in broad terms) and people, the three core processes of every business, is the real job of running a business. Leading these processes is the essence of leadership.

Moving from strategy to operations is only the first step of strategy execution. Often, companies break here; they don’t have the tools and discipline to design operations in line with the new strategy. Processes, resources, systems, structures should be realigned – and often rethought completely – as result of the new value proposition. The functional view of the business plays against the value delivery view. Operations are in place to deliver the chosen value proposition at a profit. If the VP changes, operations should change, otherwise we will have one more market strategy triggering changes only in marketing.

The gap between what a company’s leader wants to achieve and the ability of the organization to deliver could be related to his/her leadership skills for change. How to be passionately and deeply engaged in the organization and build a business based on a culture of intellectual honesty, realism and agility is an essential leadership skill. How to architect and lead a transformational change? Let’s learn from the best practice cases around the world.

Having designed operations in line with your strategy and chosen the right people doesn’t mean that execution will flow automatically. Rational, political and emotional barriers will play the game against you. Is there a framework which helps business leaders in managing strategic changes? Based on recent researches, levers like few priorities, information transparency, balanced reward systems, etc, are controllable and critical for success. All the system must be consistent and aim to build an high performance organization. How to do it? We can learn from the best of the best cases around the world. A key principle at ECSI is “to learn from extreme cases”, because tough challenges maximize learning. In strategy execution, mergers and turnarounds are extreme situations. How should we act in a mega-merger of fragile elephants with opposite cultures? We will use FIAT-Chrysler case, recently published by Harvard Business School, to do our journey into the extreme and capture lessons from Sergio Marchionne’s leadership and challenges. Alessandro Di Fiore, faculty of the course, is also the co-author of the case and will add his perspective to the case discussion.

To address all those challenges, Executing Strategy presents groundbreaking research, cases and practical tools. You will return to your organization better prepared to lead major changes. Benefits of the executive seminar will be:

• Understand the main reasons companies fall short in the execution of their strategy;
• Learn how to link value proposition and operations, and build a consistent and effective performance management system throughout the company;
• Understand what leadership apply to manage major changes;
• Learn integration strategy models for M&As;
• Learn lessons and best practices from the latest and best cases of Harvard Business School and London Business School.

The teaching method will be mainly based on cases. Some classes will be in English, others in Italian.