Managers often confuse a strategy’s design with its execution. The latter involves detailing positions to take on strategic factors such as the criteria used by customers in deciding to buy from a business, or by employees in deciding to work for an organization, or by suppliers in deciding to supply to a company.
Strategy design must take place at the organization level because each business faces its competitors in the marketplace. They compete, company against company. The reason executive teams struggle with strategy design is that they don’t adopt organization-level thinking at the start.
To see how making the difference between strategy design and execution can have a major and positive impact on your organization’s performance, read HBR’s article.
