Businesses are constantly adapting. Companies such as Dell and Wang Labs are examples of how once
successful organizations failed to adapt to changing environments. To keep pace with the world around
them, organizations must regularly engage in strategic planning to reevaluate their positions, and their
environment, and adapt accordingly. Of course, this is easier said than done. Many companies attempt
strategic planning and fail for one reason or another. Following are some best practices to keep in mind
when developing a new strategic plan – whether the plan is a broad-based business plan, or a projectspecific plan

Practices for Executing the Strategic Plan

Executing the Strategic Plan is Vital

A research thrust leader’s work doesn’t stop when the strategic plan is formulated; that’s only the beginning, a prelude to the real effort. Constant follow-up is necessary (e.g., continually checking progress and resource expenditures against the plan). Also, as noted earlier, research thrust leaders have to be willing to make adjustments to the plan if necessary—especially with respect to budgets, resource allocations, and schedules.
“Many [businesses] have plans; few execute them well. In fact, intensive research out of Harvard University indicates at least 85 percent of businesses do not execute their strategies effectively.” (Endnote 5.)
Below (sections 3.3.2–3.3.6) are five pragmatic approaches and one important open issue (section 3.3.7) for research thrust leaders charged with executing their strategic plans.

Create and Sustain Buy-In

The goal here is to show how a particular thrust fits into the overall strategic plan of the ERC and to convince thrust members of the importance of their roles in fulfilling the center’s larger vision and mission. To an extent, some buy-in may have occurred during preparation of the strategic plan. However, that buy-in may only be transitory as the real work gets underway and the relevance of a particular project to a distant vision or mission dims in the minds of participants. Accordingly, the research thrust leader must constantly reinforce the relevance to the ERC’s goals and the consequent need for buy-in as the projects continue.
Budget and resource allocation issues must be part of this best practice (e.g., what dollar and human resources will be allocated, and when?). Ideally, research thrust leaders should participate in the center-level budget and resource-allocation processes and have a clear understanding of budgetary and resource-allocation responsibilities and authorities, from the top of the ERC downward. However, the extent to which this is possible depends on the ERC and university leadership. In any event, research thrust leaders must communicate clearly and often with the ERC director, colleagues, and subordinates about budgets and resource allocations.

Identify and Optimize Critical Paths

Critical path chains should be optimized to achieve the most efficient timelines, bearing in mind that some fundamental challenges may take time to resolve. Further, although interactions among team members are to be encouraged, extraneous interaction should be avoided so as to not complicate each critical path with unimportant connections. The project goals can be accomplished without all players in the thrust being engaged with every aspect of the work.

In addition, the thrust leader should ensure there is no overlap in deliverables, such as two research efforts producing the same results. Coordination of deliverables between thrusts is also important.
When necessary, research thrust leaders should support changes within the center to clarify the critical paths. Rationale for such changes could include achieving more realistic schedules, attaining better balance of budgets and resources along the paths, or implementing successful “workarounds.”

To illustrate the last point, there might be a situation in which a research thrust leader has to decide how to keep a research team productive when waiting for a deliverable from another thrust. Alternatively, a thrust leader may be faced with developing workarounds when an outside deliverable fails to materialize. A best practice would be to request every project to have a Plan B if Plan A, which reflects input from another thrust, has a schedule slip or doesn’t happen