CHAPTER 11

STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION:
STAFFING AND DIRECTING
Staffing is a strategy designed to ensure an organization has the right
number of skilled employees to meet both current and future business
needs.
• Staffing focuses on the selection and use of employees.
• Leading is coaching people to use their abilities and skills most
effectively and efficiently to achieve organizational objectives.
• Leading emphasizes the use of programs to better align employee
interests and attitudes with a new strategy
 LEADING

• Implementation also involves leading through coaching people to use their

abilities and skills most effectively and efficiently to achieve organizational
objectives. Without direction, people tend to do their work according to
their personal view of what tasks should be done, how, and in what order.
 MANAGING CORPORATE CULTURE

• An organization’s culture can exert a powerful influence on the behavior of

all employees, it can strongly affect a company’s ability to shift its strategic
direction. A problem for a strong culture is that a change in mission,
objectives, strategies, or policies and tactics is not likely to be successful if it
is in opposition to the accepted culture of the company. Corporate culture
has a strong tendency to resist change because its very reason for existence
often rests on preserving stable relationships and patterns of behavior.
 MANAGING CULTURAL CHANGE THROUGH
COMMUNICATION
• Communication is key to the effective management of change. Companies in
which major cultural changes have successfully taken place had the following
characteristics in common:
❑ The CEO and other top managers had a strategic vision of what the company
could become and communicated that vision to employees at all levels. The current
performance of the company was compared to that of its competition and
constantly updated.
❑ The vision was translated into the key elements necessary to accomplish that
vision.
 MANAGING DIVERSE CULTURES
FOLLOWING AN ACQUISITION
• When merging with or acquiring another company, top management must give
some consideration to a potential clash of corporate cultures. According to a
Hewitt Associates survey of 218 major U.S. corporations, integrating culture was
a top challenge for 69% of the reporting companies. Cultural differences are even
more problematic when a company acquires a firm in another country. There are
four general methods of managing two different cultures. The choice of which
method to use should be based on (1) how much members of the acquired firm
value preserving their own culture and (2) how attractive they perceive the
culture of the acquirer to be.
 FOUR GENERAL METHODS OF MANAGING
TWO DIFFERENT CULTURE
1. Integration involves a relatively balanced give-and-take of cultural and
managerial practices between the merger partners, and no strong
imposition of cultural change on either company. It merges the two
cultures in such a way that the separate cultures of both firms are
preserved in the resulting culture.
2. Assimilation involves the domination of one organization over the other.
The domination is not forced, but it is welcomed by members of the
acquired firm, who may feel for many reasons that their culture and
managerial practices have not produced success. The acquired firm
surrenders its culture and adopts the culture of the acquiring company
 FOUR GENERAL METHODS OF MANAGING
TWO DIFFERENT CULTURE
3. Separation is characterized by a separation of the two companies’
cultures. They are structurally separated, without cultural exchange.
4. Deculturation involves the disintegration of one company’s culture
resulting from unwanted and extreme pressure from the other to impose
its culture and practices. This is the most common and most destructive
method of dealing with two different cultures. It is often accompanied by
much confusion, conflict, resentment, and stress. This is a primary reason
why so many executives tend to leave after their firm is acquired. Such a
merger typically results in poor performance by the acquired company and
its eventual divestment.
 ACTION PLAN
• - It states what actions are going to be taken, by whom, during what time
frame, and with what expected results. After a program has been selected
to implement a particular strategy, an action plan should be developed to
put the program in place. The resulting action plan to develop a new
advertising program should include much of the following information:
1. Specific actions to be taken to make the program operational: One
action might be to contact three reputable advertising agencies and ask them
to prepare a proposal for a new radio and newspaper ad campaign based on
the theme “Jones Surplus is now a part of Ajax Continental. Prices are lower.
Selection is better.”
2. Dates to begin and end each action: Time would have to be
allotted not only to select and contact three agencies, but to allow
them sufficient time to prepare a detailed proposal.
3. Person (identified by name and title) responsible for carrying out
each action: List someone such as Jan Lewis, advertising manager
who can be put in charge of the program.
4. Person responsible for monitoring the timeliness and
effectiveness of each action: Indicate that Jan Lewis is responsible for
ensuring that the proposals are of good quality and are priced within
the planned program budget. She will be the primary company
contact for the ad agencies and will report on the progress of the
program once a week to the company’s marketing director.
5. Expected financial and physical consequences of each action: Estimate
when a completed ad campaign will be ready to show top management and
how long it will take after approval to begin to air the ads. Estimate the
expected increase in store sales over the six-month period after the ads are
first aired. Indicate whether “recall” measures will be used to help assess the
ad campaign’s effectiveness, plus how, when, and by whom the recall data will
be collected and analyzed.
6. Contingency plans: Indicate how long it will take to get an acceptable ad
campaign to show top management if none of the initial proposals is
acceptable.
 IMPORTANCE OF ACTION PLAN

• Action plans serve as a link between strategy formulation and evaluation and
control.
• It specifies what needs to be done differently from the way operations are
currently carried out.
• During the evaluation and control process that comes later, an action plan helps
in both the appraisal of performance and in the identification of any remedial
actions, as needed. In addition, the explicit assignment of responsibilities for
implementing and monitoring the programs may contribute to better motivation.
 MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES (MOB)

• - It is a technique that encourages participative decision making through

shared goal setting at all organizational levels and performance assessment
based on the achievement of stated objectives. MBO links organizational
objectives and the behavior of individuals. Because it is a system that links
plans with performance, it is a powerful implementation technique.
 TOP QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)
• It is an operational philosophy committed to customer satisfaction and
continuous improvement.
• TQM is committed to quality/excellence and to being the best in all
functions.
• TQM aims to reduce costs and improve quality, it can be used as a program
to implement an overall low-cost or a differentiation business strategy.
 Staffing

• The implementation of new strategies and policies often calls for new
human resource management priorities and different use of personnel. Such
staffing issues can involve hiring new people with new skills, firing people
with inappropriate or substandard skills, and/or training existing employees
to learn new skills.
 STAFFING FOLLOWS STRATEGY

• As in the case of structure, staffing requirements

should follow a change in strategy.
 CHANGING HIRING AND TRAINING
REQUIREMENTS
• Employee selection and training are crucial to the success of a company's
business strategy. Training is especially important for a different strategy
emphasizing quality or customer service.
• General Electric's Aircraft Engine Group cut its workforce from 42,000 to
33,000 in the 1990s through retrenchment.
 Matching the Manager to the Strategy
• The most appropriate type of general manager needed to effectively implement a
new corporate or business strategy depends on the desired strategic direction of
that firm or business unit.

Corporate Strategy is for executives with a particular mix of skills and experiences
may be classified as an executive type.
Diversification strategy in contrast, might call for someone with an analytical mind
who is highly knowledgeable in other industries and can manage diverse product lines
which is an analytical portfolio manager.
 Executive Insiders vs. Outsiders
Executive succession is the process of replacing a key top manager. Given
that all of the major corporations worldwide replace their CEO at least once in
a five-year period.

Insider - are those directors, senior officers, and as well as the any person or
entity that beneficially owns more then 10% of a company’s voting share.
Outsider - are those who have been hired to bring fresh ideas and competence
into the organization.
 Identifying Abilities and Potential

• Job rotation—moving people from one job to another—is also used in many
large corporations to ensure that employees are gaining the appropriate
mix of experiences to prepare them for future responsibilities.
 Problems in retrenchment
• Downsizing refers to the planned elimination of positions or jobs. This program
is often used to implement retrenchment strategies.
Guidelines that have been proposed for successful downsizing:
• Eliminate unnecessary work instead of making across-the-board cuts.
• Contract out work that others can do cheaper.
•Plan for long-run efficiencies
•Communicate the reasons for actions
•Invest in the remaining employees
•Develop value-added jobs to balance out job elimination