Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294928 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-13
• 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

Insightful, Eloquent, Comprehensive, and Practical
The most important business books are written in response to an especially important question and this book is no exception: “How to make strategy work?” Hrebiniak focuses his attention on the processes, decisions, and actions which are needed to execute an appropriate strategy effectively. It soon becomes obvious that Hrebiniak is a pragmatist. His observations and recommendations are based on an abundance of real-world data. Both he and his content are results-oriented. He is determined to help his reader to see the Big Picture but also to be ever-alert for significant details. A realist, Hrebiniak fully understands that strategy execution initiatives inevitably encounter all manner of barriers, challenges, etc. and so he correctly stresses the importance of managing change as a complicated, sometimes volatile process. Hrebiniak addresses many of the same issues which Bossidy and Charan do in Execution: The Discipline of Results. However, I think he explores them in much greater depth. Most important of all, at least to me, is the fact Hrebiniak’s book is mercifully free of esoteric theories and obese hypotheses. He devotes most of his attention to explaining what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and how to do it effectively.

The material is carefully organized within ten chapters whose subjects range from “Strategy Execution Is the Key” to “Summary and Application: Making Mergers and Acquisitions Work,” followed by an Appendix in which Hrebiniak provides a strategy execution survey conducted by The Wharton School of Pennsylvania and GartnerG2 in 2003. There are references to survey results throughout the book. For example, responses to a section on “Obstacles to Strategy Execution” (Table 1.1 on page 17). I also appreciate various reader-friendly devices which Hrebiniak employs such as graphic illustrations (e.g. Figure 8.1 on page 267 which depicts a model of culture and culture change) and checklists as well as a Summary of key points at the end of each chapter.

Here are three brief excerpts from Hrebiniak’s narrative:

“The operational aspects of strategic and short-term objectives means that these objectives are measurable. They are useful for strategy execution if they measure important results. Strategy m,ust be translated into metrics that are consistent with strategy and measurable. Only then can the results of execution be adequately assessed. Without these useful metrics, successful evaluation of execution results is not possible.” (Page 88)

“In essence, [GE’s] ‘Work Out’ was run as an example of decision-making characterized by reciprocal interdependence. The methods of achieving integration or coordination were consistent with this form of interdependence and no doubt contributed to its success. In addition to Welch’s philosophy and GE culture, the processes and methods of defining interdependence and coordination needs were important to ‘Work Out’’s contributions to problem definition and to making strategy work.” (page 157)

“To change culture, don’t focus directly on culture itself or the underlying defining aspects of culture: values, norms, and ‘credos.’ Don’t try to change attitudes, hoping for a change in behavior. Focus instead on behavior....The logic here is twofold:. First, it is virtually impossible to appeal to people top change their beliefs, values, or attitudes....Second, it is important to recall that culture both affects behavior and performance [begin italics] and [end italics] is affected and reinforced by behavior and performance....How does one change behavior and, ultimately, culture? The answer is by changing people, incentives, controls, and organizational structure, as Figure 8.1., suggests.” (page 272)

Credit Hrebiniak with writing an immensely thoughtful as well as practical book in which he explains with meticulous care how to formulate an appropriate strategy, then executive it effectively despite resistance which can sometimes be formidable, and thereby produce results which may otherwise be unachievable.

Decision-makers in larger organizations may derive greater value from Hrebiniak’s book because they have a wider and deeper range of possible applications of the processes, decisions, and actions he recommends. However, as I read this book, I realized that inappropriate strategies and/or poor execution of strategies may help to explain statistics which Michael Gerber cites in his E-Myth Mastery: "Of the 1 million U.S. small businesses started this year [2005], more than 80% of them will be out of business within 5 years and 96% will have closed their doors before their 10th birthday."

These are indeed chilling statistics. Therefore, I highly recommend Hrebiniak’s book to all decision-makers in all organizations, regardless of size or nature. Also to all students who are currently preparing themselves for a career in business.

Strategy implementation-excellent coverage
This book by Lawrence Hrebiniak provides an integrated approach to to a neglected area.The underlying research based on the experience of hundreds of managers is a major strength together with the authors own consulting experience.
The author in the late stages of a long career shares his insights with you.The Wharton Business School in the US where he is based is different to other Business schools in running workshops on this topic, which is neglected by other institutions.If I could afford to attend one of his workshops I would do so, his book is a good alternative.
What you get for your money is coverage of key areas-organisation structure and execution,effective coordination,incentives etc and a case study that pulls it all together.
The author highlights the problem of speed in strategy implementation and how large complex changes can be damaged by changing to many things at once.He stresses that it may be desirable and necessary but is fraught with problems.If you want a contrasting approach to organisational change that sets out how to plan and execute rapid change see " Fast Forward - Organisational change in 100 days" - Oxford University Press - by E Murray and P Richardson.The basis of their research appears more limited than Hrebiniak's work, but is still a very useful source of ideas/guidance.
Making strategy work is a book that I will refer to frequently in my work as an interim manager/consultant.

Stan Felstead-Interchange Resources UK.

The Neophyte's Guide to Selecting and Implementing Strategy
Corporate strategy was a relatively new subject when I first became a strategy consultant in 1971. I remember executives picking bad strategies right and left and being totally clueless about how to implement a good strategy if they happened upon one.

Making Strategy Work is a good reminder that there are still organizations out there that have never picked a strategy that worked or implemented a workable strategy successfully. Yet these organizations are full of graduates of the most stellar business schools who know all the strategic management and planning lingo.

Professor Hrebiniak starts with the academic strategic lingo and clearly distills the key lessons of choosing and implementing strategies into bite-sized pieces for large organizations to implement.

It's not surprising that this book is filled with examples from the old AT&T and its remaining pieces, General Motors, Sears and other organizations known for their strategic problems. Mr. Hrebiniak has been there and done that in consulting for such organizations for many years, and describes their mind set well.

Naturally, if you are of more innovative and entrepreneurial orientation, you won't find this book nearly as interesting. But it's an important contribution to the literature that I'm surprised that someone didn't write long before now.

Well, they sort of did write this book before now. You can find pieces of this book in various books and articles . . . but Making Strategy Work is a convenient place to find all of those pieces in one place . . . for those who haven't developed and implemented a successful strategy before to get a sense of what they should be doing.