Where the rubber meets the road: strategy implementation and employee well-being

IT’S been a roller coaster for business leaders these past few years, dealing with a raft of critical business issues – the Great Resignation, corporate restructuring, business continuity issues, and mental health, to name a few. You could play business bingo on this list and many of us would tick all the boxes and then some.

Finally, the long-promised “new normal” has arrived. As a leader today, one could be forgiven for feeling a sense of reverse culture shock. The landscape might appear familiar yet the underlying dynamics have changed. Back in September 2020, I wrote a piece for BT headlined Why digital transformation efforts fail, which sought to clarify what the practice means and examined what needs to take place in order for such efforts to succeed. In the piece, I alluded to internal alignment and change management that’s required. Three years and one global pandemic later, the need for internal alignment and change management is the critical success factor in strategy implementation.

Leaders and employees recognise the need for change. A recent PwC study on the Asian workforce found that 39 per cent of respondents (employees) believe their organisation will not survive more than 10 years if it continues on its current course – while 53 per cent of Asia-Pacific CEOs shared this sentiment in PwC’s 2023 CEO survey.