Stage Three: Create a Plan for the Projects to Implement the Strategy
The final stage in the driving-forces method of strategy making is to develop a plan that defines specifically how money and manpower must be spent over time to implement the strategy. Too often, elegantly conceived strategies fail to help a company because managers do not define the projects throughout the organization that are required to implement high-level statements of strategy. And even when specific implementation projects are proposed, daily decisions about which projects have the highest priority and which get what share of the company’s resources can easily become inconsistent with strategy because of inertia, politics, and conflicts between short-term and long-term needs.