Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Implementation capabilities
It emerges from the debate about execution that there is a corporate resource that we can 
label as ‘implementation capabilities’. Certainly, the capability of people and organisations 
that allows them to get things done is not neatly defined by academics, but is instantly 
recognisable by executives. However, it is also apparent that a company’s implementation 
capabilities may be:
● 
time-specific – things change, sometimes radically;
● 
culture-specific – what works in one organisation may not work elsewhere;
● 
partial – being good at doing one type of thing does not necessarily transfer to others;
● 
latent – we may not have learned how to do things;
● 
internally inconsistent – some parts of the organisation are better at execution than are 
others;
● 
strategy-specific – we are good at doing one type of business; and,
● 
person-specific – some individual managers may be the ones who are best at getting 
things done (Piercy, 1998).
Careful thought is needed when identifying the location of implementation capabilities 
in the organisation, and particularly the people most likely to drive change effectively. It 
is interesting that one of the first management matrices was produced by Helmuth von 
Moltke, head of the Prussian army, a century-and-a-half ago. He divided his officers on two 
criteria: clever versus dim, and lazy versus energetic, to identify the following categories:
● 
Dim and lazy – good at executing orders.
● 
Dim and energetic – very dangerous because they take the wrong decisions and drive 
them forward.
● 
Clever and energetic – excellent staff officers.
● 
Clever and lazy – top field commanders who get results (Kellaway, 2015).
Evaluating and assessing executives for implementation capabilities is an important stage 
in preparing for effective execution.
The important point is that implementation capabilities are not a given that should be 
taken for granted, but something to be evaluated carefully and enhanced where possible. 
One implication is that trying to create and execute a strategy for which a company lacks 
implementation capabilities carries a high risk of failure and loss – consider the Google–
Motorola example discussed earlier. Further, enhancing and sustaining implementation 
capabilities may be one of the most important elements of managing strategic change in a 
company.
While it is not a complete answer to overcoming implementation obstacles, internal mar-
keting provides us with a set of tools to address some of the major barriers faced in the effec-
tive implementation of marketing strategies, and to manage the associated organisational 
changes. It provides us with a model for structuring and managing the implementation 

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