CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Organizational Fitness Process
A System-Wide Alignment
“
We have great strategy but cannot implement it.” These were the words of Ray Gilmartin in 1990 shortly after he became CEO of Becton Dickinson (BD), a global medical technology company (Beer & Williamson, 1991). Implementing management’s strategic intent is a challenge for most companies. Too often a business fails not because of a flawed strategy but because the
organization and management system—organization design, strategic management system, human resource system, culture and leadership—does not “fit” (align with) the strategic tasks or key success factors of the organization (see
Figure 31.1). Becton Dickinson’s global strategy—to ...