Strategy realization and implementation A study on identifying and managing critical factors to change and strategy implementation Master of Science Thesis in the Management and Economics of Innovation Programme

Changes in customer’s behavioural patterns, rapid technological development and increasing competition are just some of the reason to why changes in organisations’ environment are occurring more frequently. Forming and realizing new strategies then become a central concern for most organisations. However, even though organisations are constantly working with these issues today, 50-70% of new strategies fail to reach its desired effect (Blanchard et al, 2009). The purpose of this master thesis was to research how different actors are working with realizing strategies and how their way of working correlate with academic research in the field. The additional purpose was to give suggestions on how to more successfully realize strategies. This study is based on 21 interviews with 11 different individuals. The actors were divided into two categories. The first category is internal actors working with strategy in their own organisation. The second category is external actors working with strategy issues as consultants for other organisation. In this study three organisations and four consultancy firms was researched. During the research two main approaches to strategy was identified. The first was to work with strategy as a clear project consisting of an analysis of the organisation's current state a plan on how to reach a desired future state that is then realized. The second approach was to work with strategy as incremental improvements that together create a movement to a desired future state. However, regardless of approach to strategy three topics were identified as important for the success of the change and these three topics was researched further. The three most central concerns for the companies within this study was using effective communication, developing appropriate goals and managing resistance to change efficiently. Conclusions drawn from this is that there seems to be advantages with working more proactively with goal development and continuous communication both as a mean to working more effectively, but also to manage resistance more effectively. Lastly in this report it’s discussed that to be able to have a proactive approach a suggestion for a model for strategy impact analysis (SIA) should be developed. The purpose of a SIA model would be to assist managers to review how the realization of a strategy affects the individuals in the organisation. The advantages with such analysis would be that manager would be able to better adapt the strategy to the organisation and learn more about the own organisational culture which in turn will minimize the risk of unexpected resistance and thereby increase the likelihood of success. Identifying the root causes of resistance I also argued to be much easier than trying to predict when and how resistance can occur.