Page 81 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Developing a Strategy 71

and testing, teams need a clear signal to move ahead and commit to coor-
dinated action. Finding the right time to do that—knowing when you’ve
not only analyzed enough but also done enough real-world testing to shake
out remaining practical problems and adapt accordingly—and then having
the courage to move forward is the critical purview of the leader. As you
develop strategy, watch for the right window to make that decision.

Step 6. Allocate resources and manage implementation
The clearest signal that you are truly launching a strategy is when you
begin to allocate resources and build implementation into your operational
processes. This, too, requires some advance thinking and preparation. To-
ward the end of any strategy-making process, you will have to do more
detailed financial and organizational modeling—analyzing the investment
and people needed, additions or modifications of infrastructure, changes
in organizational structure and responsibilities, and so on.
Once you’ve agreed on a final strategy, you and your team must build
the choices and decisions into existing systems for your company: you must
integrate funding, cost allocations, and expected revenue (as appropriate)
into your budgeting process. You must accommodate any new recruit- ing
and training within your company’s HR systems. You must introduce any
new operational, technology, and infrastructure requirements of the
strategy into other functions as appropriate (for more details, see chap-
ters 3 and 4).
But throwing the implementation switch is not purely mechanical. You
as the leader must also ensure that your organization embraces and pur-
sues the new strategy in a way that generates the results you hope for. To
do that, you’ll want to pay special attention that the strategy is managed
for the highest possible performance—focused clearly on appropriately ag-
gressive goals, well integrated into performance reviews, freed from what
may be constraining barriers in the structure and culture of your organi-
zation, and similar (more on this in chapter 4).
In addition to providing for the operational integration of implemen-
tation, there are a few additional steps you should consider to get your
strategy off on the right foot and build critical early momentum.