As per this recent article in Industry Week on planning an effective policy deployment process, there is a difference between a strategic plan and strategy deployment. While a strategic plan is a three- to five-year vision of where you want an organization to be, strategy deployment is the one-year plan or process instituted to break down that vision into short-term goals that can be assigned, measured, provided with resources, and revisited to determine progress.

While short, it was an important article because many supply chain process improvements fail due to poor execution, which boils down to a failure to not only manage the change, but break the change down into manageable chunks that can be assigned, measured, provided with resources, and implemented in reasonably short time periods to demonstrate progress and interim success before enthusiasm for the initiative wears off.

In other words, the key to effective policy deployment is in the details. A long term vision is important, but so is a manageable path to get there that takes into account the timeframe that will be required which, as per Bob’s recent article on Procurement and Supply Chain Transformation: How Fast, will generally take a good 18 to 36 months.