In their HBS working paper "Overcoming the 'Silent Killers' to Strategy Implementation and Organizational Learning," HBS professor Michael Beer and Russell A. Eisenstat, president of the Center for Organizational Fitness, outline six barriers to implementing strategic plans.

Beer and Eisenstat uncovered these obstacles using a process they refined more than a decade ago called Organizational Fitness Profiling (OFP). OFP helps CEOs or business unit general managers and their top teams assess how well an operation fits their espoused strategy and management principles. The regimen requires a group of the unit's most highly respected employees to interview colleagues and internal and external customers. They then report to their leaders what they have learned about the organization.

After gathering profiles of over 150 organizational units in a dozen companies from the high-tech, pharmaceutical, medical product, hotel, banking, and building product industries, the authors examined the findings of twelve profiles conducted in four companies. In those organizations, the same six issues arose time after time: unclear strategies and conflicting priorities; an ineffective leadership team; top-down or laissez-faire management by the general manager; poor coordination across functions, businesses, or borders; lack of effective and honest vertical communication; and inadequate leadership skills and development throughout the organization. "It is clear from this data that as far as employees are concerned, the problem in their organization had to do with the fundamentals of management and leadership, not the quality or commitment of the people nor the quality of management systems and processes," write Beer and Eisenstat. Therein lies the conundrum. Because these roadblocks to implementing strategy are at the heart of an organization's leadership, they are almost never discussed -- turning them into "silent killers."

CEOs and general managers can overcome these six natural stress points -- which exist in almost every hierarchical organization, say the authors -- by using a disciplined approach that systematically confronts each one. To begin with, Beer and Eisenstat recommend that the CEO or general manager create a partnership between their top and lower-level managers, engaging the entire organization in an honest, fact-based conversation about the new strategy and its barriers. For example, one general manager in the study learned from his staff's candid feedback during an OFP that his aversion to conflict was stifling communication and hindering his unit's ability to implement strategy. Upon confronting his own weakness, he was able to manage more effectively.

That kind of open communication and self-examination is key to overcoming the silent killers. Concludes Beer, "The current competitive environment requires high levels of teamwork at the lowest possible level in the organization. These employees have significant knowledge and information about customers and products. A free flow of information that keeps people at the top informed, yet empowers those on the front lines to solve problems quickly, is crucial to implementing a successful strategy in the 21st century."

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