If you want to implement strategy successfully, then you best do it as a full internal change project. This needs to include both elements of professional project management and change management. Planning the project right, engaging the stakeholders early and monitoring and evaluating the progress closely are your keys to success.
Especially the people side of this takes a lot of instinctive intuition. Only if you manage your stakeholders - all of them, including the Tea-cook and the Cleaner - delicately your project will be derailed and delayed. On the other side, if you spend ample time with them, explaining what is being done, giving them time to think about it, discuss and voice their concerns you will get their buy-in. This will give you amazing support in the long run. In many public project, if stakeholders were engaged early and bought into the project, they were actually the ones resolving issues and removing stumbling blocks out of the way. One such example is the St. Gotthart Rail Tunnel Project, where the project manager was laughed at and made fun off when he decided to spend ample time during the planning phase meeting all the local communities affected by the project. Yet he got so much buy-in that the local communities helped him remove all hurdles on the community level and the project was finished ahead of time.
The following article gives you tips on how to set yourself up for success in strategy implementation.
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