Success is Not an Option
Beware any manager, at any level, who thinks that the most difficult part of an effort is the decision to actually do something. Such a manager will never recognize success or accomplishment on the part of the implementation teams, but will always be eager to lay blame on those teams if they don't somehow pull the effort off. He did the hard part, after all.
Since most large companies have a multitude of efforts in a year, the implementation teams get plenty of negative feedback for the things that don't go well (because the buck always stops at the bottom), and a disproportionately small amount of positive feedback for the things that do go well (since the success was a foregone conclusion after the difficult part of actually deciding was accomplished). As a result, your implementation teams get rapidly burned out. Your only hope in a place like this is that your burned out team will stagger their resignations, and not depart en masse.
