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The Oxford Strategy Insights Project was designed to assess the current approaches, aims, and focus of strategists across industries and geographies.

The project received input from 167 executives and managers across twenty-six industries, spanning over thirty countries, regarding their firm’s strategy process.

The biggest gap highlighted by the Oxford Strategy Insights Project is effective strategy execution. An overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that their organization’s strategy execution efforts are ineffective and slow, with accelerated implementation being the exception rather than the norm. In line with these findings, few firms appear to be applying the best practice of establishing an implementation management infrastructure including a “Program Manager” tasked to manage and coordinate the firm’s strategy implementation effort. The one positive element related to strategy execution is that most firms seem to have an effective strategic measurement and reporting process.

Organizations that can execute their strategies increase the likelihood of realizing the full potential of their plans. However, the study’s main finding is that effective strategy execution is severely lacking. Strategists need to become more foresighted, with a much greater focus on implementation.

Although the value of effective strategy execution has been well documented for over five-decades in both academic and management practice literature, new research has found that most strategists are still short-sighted, viewing strategy as primarily planning with a limited focus on implementation.

A seven-step Strategy Execution Model provides a tested guide to agile implementation.

Pragmatic actions, key deliverables and a case example for each of the seven steps in the model are presented.

Firms that focus more on strategic planning than implementation are often plagued with execution issues. Whereas, organizations that are able to execute their strategies as a well managed, integrated process have a much better chance of realizing the full potential of their plans.

Supporting the experience of numerous management teams, research indicates that poor execution often squanders the value companies anticipate from innovative, advantageous strategic initiatives. To minimize the likelihood of mismanagement, companies need a repeatable process that provides an integrated and actionable approach to effective strategy execution.

Senior executives and middle managers need a structured, coordinated system for managing strategy implementation. The author’s seven-step method has been tested in practice and refined. It emphasizes communication and agile adaptability.

As the Covid-19 crisis recedes, struggling firms will be bought by bargain hunters and suffering industries will consolidate, giving rise to another wave of M&A transactions. But buyers beware! There is ample evidence that M&A creates significant post-deal performance issues for acquiring “buy-side” firms.

New research shows that effectively managing three processes of acquisitions can have an outsized beneficial impact on M&A success.

Recent research has identified three mission-critical tasks that stand out as being vital to creating M&A success: Process 1: Accurately valuing targets. Process 2: Proficiently managing post-merger integration. Process 3: Skillfully addressing the “big-three human factors” of M&A.

Robust talent retention and re-recruitment plans initially entail identifying key talent, defined as individuals and groups who are essential to retain and re-recruit during a transitionary period and those required for long-term value creation.

The articles describes best practices for post-deal M&A activities companies could perform better including operations and technology integration, communication, cultural analysis and integration, talent management and retention, senior leadership involvement and measurement and reporting.

Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap's recent announcement of a 50% job cut at Sunbeam aside, “growth” has replaced “downsizing” as the dominant strategic focus throughout American business. Mergers and acquisitions, new market penetration, mass customization, enhanced customer service, strategic alliances, and the like are all in the sights of businesses large and small. But while activities focused on the cost side of the profit equation represent a relatively simple “strategy” to pursue—thanks to armies of consultants churning out graphs, charts, and tables recommending head cuts—growth strategies present management with an even greater challenge: how to make their strategies work.

Attracting and retaining a talented work force is a strategic imperative. Doing so requires organizations to create an overall context through a set of macro‐level organizational practices we refer to as the HR value chain. However, this organizational context must be supplemented at the micro level through leader behavior, job characteristics, and challenging goals. An evidence‐based integrative model of organizational practices is developed that will lead to a high level of employee engagement.

The paper addresses several key questions: Do engaged employees perform better than those that are not engaged? How should companies best organize their HR processes at a firm‐wide level to foster employee engagement? What should companies do at an employee level to foster engagement? What is the role of employee to manager trust in employee engagement? A review and summary of existing empirical literature from the areas of employee engagement, human resources, strategy, and leadership was assembled to answer these questions and provide an evidenced‐based set of prescriptions for practicing managers seeking to enhance employee engagement.

The evidence presented supports seven key engagement principles characterized by: an integrated HR value chain; full‐range leader behaviors incorporating contingent reward and transformational behaviors; job enrichment through variety, significance, and task identity; challenging and specific performance goals; in‐role job performance; extra‐role performance behaviors; and employee trust in their leader.

The content of the paper is useful to executives and managers in firms of various sizes and across industries by: presenting empirically‐based evidence that engaged employees perform better than those that are not engaged; providing pragmatic recommendations regarding how to establish firm‐wide human resources process that foster workforce engagement; providing practical recommendations regarding what companies should do at an employee level to foster engagement; explaining the role of employee to manager trust in employee engagement; providing a bridge across the often decried gap between academic research and the practice of management.