Having sat on both sides of the fence on this one, in multiple firms, there are five common sticking points or hurdles I see in implementing a strategy.
1 - Not having a strategy. You can't implement what you don't have.
It doesn't have to be grand, a one-pager of bullets agreed by the senior partners can honestly go a long way. But you do need one.
2 - The strategy doesn't have sufficiently broad buy in from partners across the different practice areas or, in an attempt to please everyone, it's too broad as to be meaningless in practical terms
By all means thrash it out behind closed doors, but you need partners to take cabinet responsibility for the strategy once it emerges and put those disagreements to rest. Public disagreement or sniping will only undermine things.
3 - There's a strategy, but no one knows about it beyond the ivory tower.
This may be through shyness in communicating the strategy, or an assumption that everyone knows about it because the senior management team do. You may be a little tired after all the wrangling, but most folks (a) haven't heard it and (b) aren't really listening either! You really can't over-communicate at this point.
4 - The firm level strategy doesn't relate to specifics at a local practice group, or sector level. People can't see the connection with their day-to-day work.
This can be quite subtle, but it's the difference between the strategy being perceived as something central management are doing vs something everyone is doing. Get super specific in team meetings about how that team is expected to contribute to the more lofty strategic goals.
5 - The strategy doesn't rule anything out, and so quickly loses momentum for saying 'yes' to everything.
The canny within your firm will be really good at aligning everything they were personally going to do anyway with what the new strategy says they should be doing. I've no shame in saying I've played this game well in the past!
But, ultimately, a strategy is about how to best deploy finite resources, and so it needs to articulate what you're not doing, as much as it articulates what you are doing.
This is also where being too vague to appease differing interests at 2 can really bog you down.
The clearer your strategy is, the better.
In summary...
Strategies - have one, agree it, communicate it, make it relate to the day job, and make it says no as much as it says yes
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