The effect of strategic project leadership elements on successful strategic management implementation

Executives and managers are required to develop the required competencies to ensure the long term success of their organisations. In the competitive and dynamic business environment organisations are faced with, strategic management and planning has gained momentum as a management science which aids managers and executives in circumventing the challenges that such a dynamic environment can present. Strategic management and planning is, however, of no consequence unless the strategic plan is deployed and implemented in an organisation and the implemented plan is evaluated in action. Many organisations find the process of strategy implementation much more of a challenge than the process of strategy formulation. Consequently, many of these organisations have utilised project management to assist in the strategic management implementation process. The competitive and dynamic business environment also requires organisations to constantly develop and execute more innovative business strategies to remain competitive. In order to do this, many organisations have started to explore the alignment between business strategy and project management strategy. Various commentators note that successful implementation of strategy is challenging, especially considering the 70 per cent execution failure rate. It is further noted that organisations only realise 60 per cent of the potential value of their intended strategies due to failures in planning and implementation. Consequently, projects are often chosen as vehicles to implement these business strategies. The primary objective of this research is to improve the implementation of strategic management initiatives within organisations. This was achieved by investigating whether Shenhar’s strategic project leadership elements (i.e. organisational structure, process definition, implementation metrics, implementation tools and organisational culture) have an impact on the successful implementation of strategic management initiatives. The study also aims to investigate whether age, gender, race, designation, education, industry experience and tenure at Eskom Telecommunications, have an impact on the perception of the following variables under investigation: Implementation metrics; Implementation tools; Organisational structure; Organisational culture; Process definition; and Strategic management implementation. If the correlation between strategic management implementation and Shenhar’s strategic project leadership elements is established, it would assist organisations in the implementation of successful strategic management initiatives, by aiding an understanding of how these independent variables affect the implementation process. Improved implementation of strategic management initiatives would assist management teams in organisations to overcome the unique challenges that change in an organisation’s internal and external environment cause. The scope of this study was limited to be conducted in Eskom Telecommunications only. The study is concluded with a number of recommendations that Eskom Telecommunications could implement to improve strategic management implementation and a synopsis of this study’s contribution to theory is provided, in addition to recommendations for future research