Although ultimate responsibility for implementing and executing strategy falls upon the shoulders of senior executives,

a. the success or failure of the implementation/execution effort hinges chiefly on a company's reward system and whether its policies and procedures are strategy-supportive.
b. top-level managers still have to rely on the active support and cooperation of middle and lower-level managers in pushing needed changes in functional areas and operating units.
c. the pivotal and most decisive strategy-implementing actions are carried out by frontline supervisors who have the day-to-day responsibility of seeing that key activities are done properly.
d. the success or failure of the implementation/execution effort hinges chiefly on doing an effective job of empowering employees to make day-to-day operating decisions that support good strategy execution.
e. it is a company's employees who most determine whether the drive for good strategy execution will succeed or fail.