Unlocking the Power of Strategy in the Middle East

Starting at first with multi-day workshops where leadership would emerge with a vision and a list of values to post on websites and in hallways, the process lately has been dominated by the development of squiggly-lined strategy maps in tribute to successful workshop facilitation by balanced-scorecard "gurus." According to GCC market research performed by Oliver Wyman, moving from strategy planning to successful strategy implementation, however, is a step that has eluded many regional entities.
 
An overarching reason for why strategy execution fails is that organizations often do not successfully translate their strategic objectives into specifics that impact employees' daily work. In some cases, we found that strategies focused only on functions that dealt with external constituents, leaving support functions such as human resources and finance without a direct connection to the strategic plan. Without "line-of-sight" linkages and the ability to cascade the top-level strategy throughout the organization, the power of strategy to unlock the potential of the organization will remain untapped.