Strategy Execution, Leadership and Change Management
What this domain tests
This domain tests execution: how strategy becomes measurable work, and how leaders move people through change. Expect questions on operating models, scorecards, change frameworks, and resistance.
Core rules
- McKinsey 7S checks alignment of strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, and shared values; strategy fails when the other six do not fit.
- Balanced Scorecard translates strategy into financial, customer, internal-process, and learning/growth objectives with cause-and-effect links.
- OKRs set ambitious objectives and measurable key results; they need a cadence of check-ins, not an annual form.
- Kotter's 8 steps sequence urgency, coalition, vision, communication, empowerment, short wins, consolidation, and anchoring.
- ADKAR diagnoses individual change: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement.
- Leadership must match context: directive in crisis, participative in complex change, coaching for capability building.
Worked example
A bank introduces a new credit-approval workflow to cut turnaround time. Balanced Scorecard: financial (cost per loan), customer (days to approval, NPS), internal (percentage of files auto-cleared, rework rate), learning (credit-officer certification). Kotter: create urgency with lost-deal data, form a coalition of credit and technology heads, run a pilot branch, publicise quick wins, then embed in incentives. ADKAR reveals that training alone fails if officers lack the desire to surrender manual override. Reasoning: execution is alignment of metrics, incentives, and capability.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing strategy as a list of initiatives without owners or measures.
- Copying OKRs without review cadence or prioritisation.
- Assuming a town hall equals communication.
- Ignoring middle managers, who translate change into daily practice.
- Confusing Kotter steps with a one-off launch; anchoring is the longest phase.