9. Which of these factors will represent our competitive advantage (s)?

10. In which of our current product or market areas will we be placing the greatest emphasis (resources and attention)?

11. In what new product or market areas will we be placing the greatest emphasis?

12. What financial and non-financial measures will we use to assess the viability of the strategy?

13. How does our strategy implementation plan ensure that:

 Department goals, design, and management support the strategy?

 Process goals, design, and management support the strategy?

 Position/people goals, design, and management support the strategy?

As Alan Brache put it, "The 'dollars to shareholders' component of the business is a measure of how well the organization has addressed these thirteen questions."3

Another researcher, Ben Tregoe, defines strategy as, "The framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization."4 The strategic decision-making framework should penetrate and instruct every decision-making point in the operation. As a practical test, an organization's personnel at all levels can answer these thirteen questions clearly, unambiguously, and unaided. They can demonstrate how they are influenced by their answers in their day-to-day activities and decisions. If they cannot do so, some important aspect of strategic implementation or its management

is deficient and strategic renewal is indicated.

Obviously, the answers will be incomplete or deficient without a firm understanding of costs. Weak cost intelligence undermines management decision making, and consequently, priorities and resource allocation also become weak or distorted. If so, incorporate some fundamental cost research, such as Activity-Based Costing or Resource Consumption Accounting, into your strategic renewal evaluation and change effort.

To illustrate, in one ABC initiative, a consumer goods manufacturer discovered that: (1) 80 percent of their revenues came from 20 percent of their customers; (2) 20 percent of their customers generated 300 percent of their profits; and therefore (3) the other 80 percent of their customers lose 200 percent! With the potential to triple its profitability by being more selective, this company immediately became much more discriminating in its marketing and sales. Sometimes a "new strategic beginning" is as easy as that.

These assessment and formulation methodologies mesh with popular strategic and tactical practices such as those described in Zook and Allen's "Profit from the Core," Kaplan and Norton's "Balanced Scorecard," Tregoe and Zimmerman's "Top Management Strategy," and with vital strategic

support methodologies such as Activity-Based Costing/Management, Customer/Stakeholder Value Added, Performance Management, EVA/EP, and Process Re-engineering.

Larry Bossidy, talking about his turn around success at Honeywell, pointed out; "Execution is a discipline and must be built into a company's strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it."5 Renewal in the form of "a new beginning" requires reformulation of strategy. This may involve a major change or a series of less dramatic modifications to key elements. Restoration renewal requires back-to-basics, hard-nosed Management 101. The implementation and sustaining of strategic change requires the same tough, deliberate follow-through that epitomizes business basics.

Exemplary execution is the key to sustainable change and a critical success factor for survival, whether an organization is implementing reformulated strategy or just tightening up all of its operations and processes. Assuming the organization in renewal has worked out its future-oriented answers to the 13 strategic questions or has completed an equivalent strategy formulation exercise, a strategic change agenda must be identified and its effective implementation planned. The strategic change agenda is the set of changes necessary to move the organization from where it is now to where it wants to be. Every change element or change cluster in the agenda must be planned and implemented.