Leadership and management as an enabler for strategy execution in municipalities in South Africa

Abstract

Research and literature confirmed that whilst progress has been made in recent years, there is still a pressing need amongst communities in South Africa for improved service delivery. There is also increasing frustration and anger at the inability of municipalities to do what is expected of them. Municipalities in general have a poor record in respect of execution of strategy. The paper will focus in the literature review on the 8 ‘S’ strategy execution framework developed by Higgins (2005), that is based on the McKinsey Seven ‘S’ s Framework, first introduced in 1980 by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. It is clearly indicting that an excellent strategy may put a municipality or business on the competitive map but only successful execution will keep it there. Research and literature to date focused primarily on planning and strategy formulation but neglected the very important execution process. Whilst strategy execution is a dismal failure in most organizations, very little research to date focused on strategy execution. Managers and their employees must apply new ways of thinking on leadership and management in order for today’s high performing organizations to bridge the strategy-execution gap due to the fact that their strategies translate to specific operational goals.