top of page

Why are some companies more successful than others?


"It often comes down to a company's strategy and the way we work with strategy.
Planning and executing the strategy is crucial to the success of a company. You can have a great product and be in a unique market, but if you fail on the strategic side, it's an uphill battle and success is much harder to achieve," says Susan Lynch, a professor of strategy with many years of experience at Mckinsey.

"When you work with the strategy of a company, you are at the very core of it, and the content, form and not least the way you execute the strategy is extremely important for the success of a company.

It is so important that you have a very clear division of roles in relation to the strategic work. The top management's primary task is to design, execute and evaluate the strategy, while the board's task is to challenge the top management and ask about the challenges that may be encountered in connection with the execution of the strategy," she explains.

Susan Lynch is based in Boston, is a Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and is associated with the AVT Business School, where she teaches strategy in the Executive CBA/MBA programme. Susan Lynch holds a PhD in Strategic and International Management from London Business School.

​

Susan Lynch has taught at many of the world's leading business schools and has experience leading and designing strategy development programmes for Fortune 500 organisations and leading government institutions. Prior to her career as a researcher, Susan spent seven years with Mckinsey as a consultant.


Source: Article AVT Business school, 04 October 2019

     Facts on the implementation of the strategy and strategy work:


 

  • 70 % of strategy fails (Mckinsey)

  • 60-90 % of strategy implementation fails (Harvard business Review)

  • 71% of employees do not know the strategy and 74% of them do not know how to execute it (Forbes)

  • 70 % of senior executives are dissatisfied with the strategy process itself (Mckinsey)

  • 2006 global survey: 1st priority: "implementing the strategy"

  • 2007 survey: 1st priority: "excellent execution" - 3rd priority: "implementation of the strategy"

 

Various surveys over the last 2 decades show that between 60 and 80% of companies fail to achieve the goals, they set out in their strategic plan
 

  •   BP CEO Tony Hayward said in 2007:

"it's not the strategy itself that's our problem, it's the execution of the strategy"

 

  • 1996 survey: in the vast majority of participating organisations, less than 10% of employees surveyed said they understood the company's strategy + it was also found that 85% of management teams spent less than 1 hour a
    month discussing strategy and in fact 50% of teams said they hardly ever spent time discussing strategy.

​

Important strategy questions:

 

​

  • Why is it difficult to work with strategy

  • Why is it difficult to get full value from your strategy work?

  • What would it take to improve your strategy process?

  • What gives a good strategy process? & who are the key drivers in a good strategy process?

  • Is strategy an individual or a team effort?

  • Which ingredients/elements ensure high performance of a strategy?

  • Why do many fail with their strategies or why do they not get enough ROI?

  • Where are your strengths/weaknesses in your strategy process?

  • Which part of the strategy process are you best and worst & do you know why?

bottom of page