Making It Happen

Rebecca Stephens contends that the success of a strategy often rests on a single person who is steadfastly devoted to the goal and skilled at leading others and getting ideas across. Everyone, she suggests, has the capacity to drive change and see things through, even when the odds are stacked against them.

Nearly every kind of organization now needs a workable plan to pass through turbulent times with as little upheaval as possible. The Project Management Institute reports that 37% of projects fail because their objectives and milestones were never clearly defined. Carrying a strategy through successfully is therefore unusual, and this book looks at the people who manage it.

Stephens interviews a varied group whose persistence led to strategies being carried out successfully. Most of them created change that reached beyond themselves or their own employer and into wider society. Many work in settings known for clinging to custom and resisting new ideas, such as the civil service, the United Nations, medicine, education, financial services and long-established multinational firms. Alongside these accounts, she draws on her own experience in corporate work, journalism and mountaineering, and she argues for listening to many different viewpoints and experiences in order to find practical lessons that can be used.

Her central conclusion is that purpose, conviction and optimism, joined with firm commitment and the ability to influence and persuade, are what allow a strategy to be put into practice and carried through.