CIO: Is there a point in implementing a strategy where companies tend to stumble?

C Davis Fogg: Inevitably, there are people who aren't up to the job or who don't like the job and have to be moved out of the way. Companies don't like to do that, but they have to do it up front; they can't do it as they go along.

The other stumbling block is to assume that people will rise to the competency you need. You have someone whose skills are out of date, and you say, We'll teach him. That doesn't work because you'll have to wait for them to catch up.

Is that fair? Workers have done what was required of them, but now that you're changing your strategy, you're just going to throw them aside.

You don't throw them aside. You leave them in the job with very tightly defined objectives - no more and no less than what anybody else is going to have to do - and you give them a chance to perform under the new standards. You give them education if they need it. I can almost guarantee that within 18 months the bulk of those people will leave on their own, particularly if you give them a good severance package. Guess what percentage of top management versus middle management will leave.

CIO: About 40, 50?

C Davis Fogg: A survey I did shows that over a very short period of time, about two-thirds of senior management opts out when the standards are changed to a much higher performance level - and about one-third of the workforce.

CIO: So the problem in successfully executing a strategy is that companies don't set standards?

C Davis Fogg: They don't set good standards.

CIO: Why don't people know that? Isn't it obvious that executives need to establish a system of accountability, get rid of resisters and develop a staff with the skills they'll need to move ahead in their company?

C Davis Fogg: These things are cultural in companies and, unfortunately, the culture you inherit is going to drive what's going on until you change it. Older line companies in particular are not very good about accountability. Even if they have objectives, nobody gets punished for not meeting them. You have to have some-body at the helm who's going to say that not meeting objectives is intolerable.