Strategic Initiatives are an Organisational Headache

You read that heading correctly. I’m not going mad.

Strategic initiatives can make or break a business. They are essential to an organisations evolution, enabling organisations to operate and compete better than before. However, they are a major challenge too, often tugging at the very structure they are intended to help. Maybe that is why over 60% of initiatives designed to implement change in business fail.

Strategic initiatives are intended to have a positive impact on people and the way they run the business. Though the process of executing the strategic initiative can be formidable, arduous and often painful for all concerned.

Why is this?

Strategic initiatives don’t fit neatly into the organisation. They spread across departments, business units and geographies. Typically spanning the customary organisational silos that are found in just about every business.

Strategic initiatives don’t have permanent resources. Resources get redeployed from across disparate parts of the organisation. Typically they get poached, borrowed or coerced into working on the initiative. The resources often have their “day jobs” to perform as well.

Strategic initiatives require cross organisation alignment. They need people from all areas to be bought into the initiative. Often they are unaware of or don’t fully realise the impact and benefits.

These challenges need to be constantly addressed in order to ease the organisational headache.