When building out a strategy for your business, Brent Grover, author of The Little Black Book of Strategic Planning for Distributors, outlined five common mistakes distributors often make. They included failure to assess the internal environment, focusing on the wrong customer segments and failing to align the plan with business processes.

You can get his book in the MDM Store.

In a recent interview, Wharton’s Lawrence G. Hrebiniak, emeritus management professor and author of Making Strategy Work, talks about common mistakes companies make after the strategy is on paper – mistakes that keep companies from effectively executing on their strategies. 

As Grover writes: “Many companies have spent huge amounts of time and money writing the perfect (or nearly perfect) plan only to show a presentation to the board of directors and then place the binders in the corporate archives. But musty books on a dusty shelf don’t do anything to address the imperatives of a compelling goal, role clarity and mutual trust.”

Here are three mistakes Hrebiniak outlines that distributors should keep in mind to avoid this trap:

Viewing implementation as a lower-level task. Thinking of strategy as the leaders’ role and execution as everyone else’s should be avoided, he said. It can “create cultural rifts and poor communication” across groups.

Assuming strategy is a “one-shot” deal. Implementation, Hrebiniak said, is a process and not a quick fix. It requires collaboration and coordination among a number of variables that are constantly changing in your business.

Depending on strategy to motivate. If you want your employees to buy into the strategy – no matter how good it is – you have to communicate the benefits and what has to be done to achieve it.

Read more on these and other common mistakes in this interview from Knowledge@Wharton.