Execution Challenges

I’ve had this post on the Barriers to Strategy Execution tagged in my Bloglines account for several weeks now and every time I stumble back across it, I find myself wondering “which of these nine execution challenges are the most important to tackle first when trying to move an organization forward?”

Here's a list of the primary execution challenges, based on surveys of organizational leaders:

1. Inability to manage change effectively or overcome internal resistance to change.
   
2. Strategy conflicts with the existing organizational structure.
   
3. Poor or inadequate information sharing among individuals or business units responsible for strategy execution.
   
4. Unclear communication of responsibility and/or accountability for execution decisions or actions.
   
5. Employees' lack of feeling of ownership of a strategy or execution plan.
   
6. Lack of guidelines or a model to guide strategy execution.
   
7. Lack of understanding of the role of organizational structure and design in the execution process.
   
8. Inability to generate buy-in or agreement on critical execution steps or actions.
   
9. Lack of incentives or inappropriate incentives to support execution objectives.

From my 15+ years in libraries, my sense is that that numbers 2 and 5 are tied in the first position followed by a rapid domino effect of all the rest. But I’m wondering what you think … What would you put at the top? Which of these do you think are the hardest for libraries to tackle?

BTW: The good news for me (at least in my current position) is that I see lots of these potential dominoes quickly dissolving. And it’s amazing for me to be part of an organization that is fueled by so much shared passion to serve our customers even better.