Crossing the chasm: Leadership nudges to help transition from strategy formulation to strategy implementation

Alex Tawse, Vanessa M. Patrick and Dusya Vera

Business Horizons, 2019, vol. 62, issue 2, 249-257

Abstract: Top managers tend to focus on strategy formulation and planning but fail to embrace the problem-solving complexity of strategy implementation. This can lead to implementation failures that are reflected in misaligned organizations that seem to know where they want to go but cannot seem to get there. We posit that one reason for the ineffective transition from strategy formulation to strategy implementation is that planning is associated with a different set of thought processes and emotional experiences than is required for strategy implementation. We integrate research from management (strategy implementation and change management) with that from psychology (self-regulation and nudges) to identify the transition from strategic planning to implementation as a roadblock that prevents effective strategy implementation. We then present six leadership nudges that aid this transition. The first set of nudges are willpower-enhancing nudges that rely on increasing willpower to help transition from planning to implementation: Remove the distraction to plan, develop implementation intentions, and use verbal framing. The second set are desire-reducing nudges that work to decrease the desirability of planning and in so doing facilitate the transition to implementation: Highlight the end game, leverage a crisis, and celebrate small wins.

Keywords: Strategy formulation; Strategy implementation; Managerial levers; Nudges; Self-regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318301538
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:62:y:2019:i:2:p:249-257

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.09.005

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().