Employee Involvement in Strategy Realization

Abstract

Strategy is used by organizations to adjust to emerging challenges and opportunities in the market environment. Due to a more rapidly changing market caused by globalization, strategy has become increasingly important. Organizations often struggle to implement strategy successfully caused by difficulties with the transition from the strategy formulation phase into the realization phase. Fully involving the employees in this phase appears to be challenging, they are often not properly informed or do not understand the strategy. The main objective of this thesis was to create a holistic and practical solution which improves the realization of strategy by motivating employees to contribute. The solution was designed to be usable by Strategiemakers (the client) as well as by organizations themselves. In order to design the solution, a theoretical research and empirical research were conducted to create an holistic understanding of the strategic process and triangulate insights. In literature three main phases of the strategic process were identified: Strategy forming – Guiding policies – Realization. These phases were specified by researching the strategic process of four highly varying organizations, which uncovered six challenges in the realization phase. From these challenges was decided to focus on the troublesome activity of triggering the employee to contribute to the strategy, since a solution for this lied in the reach of this master thesis.
Insight into the perspective of the employee on the strategic realization phase provided knowledge on how to improve their motivation for strategy realization. Three parts of this perspective were researched: the influence of the organizational context the employee functions in, the employees' experience of the strategy and general motivators of the employee. With these insights, a holistic and practical solution was designed to facilitate organizations in triggering their employees to adventure in strategy realization. This solution is based on the idea of enhancing the employees' intrinsic motivation by creating a win-win situation for them and the organization. Through six steps the organization is facilitated in linking the personal development of the employee to the strategic objectives which addresses the intrinsic motivation of the employee. In the designed trajectory, the organization is aided in the specification of their strategy by determining which skills and capabilities are needed for the realization. Next, the employees are guided in the discovery of their desired skills and ambitions. Lastly, the canvas kit facilitates the process of making a connection between the employees' desires in development and the skills required for the realization of the strategy.