One of the reason that Pakistan took recourse to terrorism as part of the military strategy execution against India was that Pakistan believed in bleeding India through a thousand cuts, since it was not capable of inflicting a fatal blow through one attack.
I have seen a lot of organizations where strategy execution bleeds to death by a thousand cuts inflicted by myriad of sources. These are hundreds of mutinies at various levels that bring a strategy down.
The root cause of most of these mutinies is that people & technology prefers 'status quo'. They do not change readily. They do not want to make a single alteration to life as usual. Managers want to protect their turf, customers want to stick to their old habits, salesmen want to safeguard their territories.
Customers refuse to migrate to a brand new improved product line, since they are comfortable with the features and services of the older version. The 'mutiny of the customer' rebels against a strategist who takes him for granted, making a lot of assumptions at his behest. Just because customer is buying wealth management services from you, does not mean that he will buy travel related services. He has a friendly neighborhood travel agent that he is very comfortable with . The customer rebels against the idea of ' services super market' . Clearly unless a very compelling reason is given, and customer's inputs are taken , what seems like a good diversification/alliance/merger/new product strategy doesn't take off.
Then there is the 'mutiny of the employee'. No employee really wants to change status quo unless there are strong reason and incentive for him to do so. A salesman used to selling a product might be incentivized to sell a solution, but the salesman is clearly unsure of whether he is capable to do that. So he sticks to his knitting citing his inability on account of any flippant excuse. Similarly a salesman selling the highly incentivized real estate is not convinced about selling mortgage to his customer (since the incentive is low) . So in both cases cross-selling and up selling strategy looks great on paper , but the 'mutiny of the employee' puts one more cut on the strategy and bleeds it a little more.
Another mutiny that takes donkeys years to resolve is the 'mutiny of the IT system'. You might put a new purchase software with fancy reports but it refuses to talk to maintenance software . So inventory of maintenance spares cannot be updated real time. Or an HR software refuses to talk to the e-learning software, so real time training man days cannot be updated in HR .
So there are these hundreds of mutinies waiting to happen, once a strategy is ready for execution. Very often, the over-confidence at the strategy level( that stems from a grand new vision, a sparkling new business opportunity, a fascinating new product , a big merger , an ambitious cost cutting program) does not take into account the possibility of either the occurrence or the fierceness of these mutinies.
While individually they might not be very worrisome, when put together they can bring the bold new vision or the bright new strategy on its knees.
It is very surprising indeed that instead of toning down estimates of sales on account of these mutinies , strategists over-estimate them . Instead of hyping the possible cost savings or merger synergies, companies should discount them by a factor attributed to resistance at various levels.
Thankfully for India, while Pakistan succeeded in sending the trained fidayeen in India, its other planned mutinies like causing communal riots, economic setbacks etc.. failed to take off.
I have seen a lot of organizations where strategy execution bleeds to death by a thousand cuts inflicted by myriad of sources. These are hundreds of mutinies at various levels that bring a strategy down.
The root cause of most of these mutinies is that people & technology prefers 'status quo'. They do not change readily. They do not want to make a single alteration to life as usual. Managers want to protect their turf, customers want to stick to their old habits, salesmen want to safeguard their territories.Customers refuse to migrate to a brand new improved product line, since they are comfortable with the features and services of the older version. The 'mutiny of the customer' rebels against a strategist who takes him for granted, making a lot of assumptions at his behest. Just because customer is buying wealth management services from you, does not mean that he will buy travel related services. He has a friendly neighborhood travel agent that he is very comfortable with . The customer rebels against the idea of ' services super market' . Clearly unless a very compelling reason is given, and customer's inputs are taken , what seems like a good diversification/alliance/merger/new product strategy doesn't take off.
Then there is the 'mutiny of the employee'. No employee really wants to change status quo unless there are strong reason and incentive for him to do so. A salesman used to selling a product might be incentivized to sell a solution, but the salesman is clearly unsure of whether he is capable to do that. So he sticks to his knitting citing his inability on account of any flippant excuse. Similarly a salesman selling the highly incentivized real estate is not convinced about selling mortgage to his customer (since the incentive is low) . So in both cases cross-selling and up selling strategy looks great on paper , but the 'mutiny of the employee' puts one more cut on the strategy and bleeds it a little more.
Another mutiny that takes donkeys years to resolve is the 'mutiny of the IT system'. You might put a new purchase software with fancy reports but it refuses to talk to maintenance software . So inventory of maintenance spares cannot be updated real time. Or an HR software refuses to talk to the e-learning software, so real time training man days cannot be updated in HR .
So there are these hundreds of mutinies waiting to happen, once a strategy is ready for execution. Very often, the over-confidence at the strategy level( that stems from a grand new vision, a sparkling new business opportunity, a fascinating new product , a big merger , an ambitious cost cutting program) does not take into account the possibility of either the occurrence or the fierceness of these mutinies.
While individually they might not be very worrisome, when put together they can bring the bold new vision or the bright new strategy on its knees.
It is very surprising indeed that instead of toning down estimates of sales on account of these mutinies , strategists over-estimate them . Instead of hyping the possible cost savings or merger synergies, companies should discount them by a factor attributed to resistance at various levels.
Thankfully for India, while Pakistan succeeded in sending the trained fidayeen in India, its other planned mutinies like causing communal riots, economic setbacks etc.. failed to take off.
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