Formulating strategy is one thing. Executing it throughout the entire organization... well, that's the really hard part. Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it—and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, Dr. Hrebiniak offers a comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world.

Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize, and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies. He offers a systematic roadmap for execution that encompasses every key success factor: organizational structure, coordination, information sharing, incentives, controls, change management, culture, and the role of power and influence in the execution process.

Making Strategy Work concludes with a start-to-finish case study showing how to use Hrebiniak's ideas to address one of today's most difficult business execution challenges: ensuring the success of a merger or acquisition. The advice on making M&A strategies work justifies the addition of this book to any execution toolkit.

About the Author:
Lawrence G. Hrebiniak is a professor in the Department of Management of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a member of the Wharton faculty since 1976 and currently teaches courses in competitive strategy and strategy implementation in the Wharton M.B.A. and Executive Education programs. He held managerial positions in the automobile industry prior to entering academia, and is a past president of the Organization Theory Division of the Academy of Management. For over two years, he was one of five Wharton faculty members providing commentaries on the Wharton Management Report, a daily TV program on the Financial News Network. He coauthored Implementing Strategy (PHPTR 1984) and authored The We-Force in Management (Jossey-Bass, Inc. 1994), two other books, and numerous articles in professional journals.

His consulting activities and executive development programs focus on strategy execution, the formulation of strategy, and organizational design—both inside and outside the U.S. Dr. Hrebiniak's clients have included Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Chemical Bank, Isuzu, Dun & Bradstreet, DuPont, the Social Security Administration, First American Bankshares, General Motors, Chase Manhattan, Studio Ambrosetti, Microsoft, Aventis, and GE.