Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Myth 1 – Execution equals alignment : actually, companies seem pretty good at cascading 
goals down the organisation but less so at managing coordination across the units and 
functions in the company.
● 
Myth 2 – Execution means sticking to the plan : companies invest heavily in formal plan-
ning and budgeting, but are less skilled at real-time adjustment to changed circumstances 
or the agility to achieve effective implementation.
● 
Myth 3 – Communication equals understanding : managers are shocked at how poorly 
their strategy is understood throughout the organisation, in spite of large investments in 
‘communicating’, which results in messages that are unclear and change too often.
● 
Myth 4 – A performance culture drives execution : in reality, execution is not just about 
performance-orientation; a culture that supports execution must recognise and reward 
other things as well, such as agility, teamwork and ambition.
● 
Myth 5 – Execution should be driven from the top : in fact, in complex organisations, 
execution lives and dies with ‘distributed leaders’ – the middle managers and technical 
experts who run critical parts of the business. They are the ones who represent manage-
ment to most employees, partners and customers. Execution should be driven from the 
middle, but guided from the top ( Sull et al ., 2015 ).
Figure 16.1 
Key issues in looking at strategy implementation and internal marketing
The strategy
implementation
challenge
in marketing
The
development
of internal
marketing
Scope of
internal 
marketing
Planning
for internal
marketing
Cross-
functional
partnerships
as internal
marketing
Implement-
ation
and internal
marketing
Using internal
marketing as
implementation
strategy
Working across
the organisation
and the network 
to get things
done
What can you
address with
the tools of
internal marketing?
Developing a
strategy for
structured change
programmes to
implement strategy
Where does
internal
marketing
come from and
what does it mean?
The strategists’
dilemma – can we 
make a strategy
really happen?

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CHAPTER 16 STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AND INTERNAL MARKETING
The authors of this study suggest we should think carefully about what is really needed to 
achieve strategy implementation and consider the worry that several widely-held beliefs 
about how to implement strategy are actually misleading.
In fact, there are many pitfalls faced in moving from strategies and plans to effective 
implementation, and the changes that are usually involved for an organisation, its people 
and its partners. One listing of implementation pitfalls likely to resonate with managers’ 
experiences identifies the following issues:
●