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Strategic and internal alignment
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Recommended: Strategic and internal alignment
COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE
By: Prateek Jain, PGDM 2014-16
Strategy as Stretch
Strategy must be built upon where the firm is and where it wants to be in future.
It is not the cash that fuels the journey to the future, but the emotional & intellectual energy of every employee.
Imagine that if you were an investor who, a decade or two ago, was asked to choose between the following pairs of firms as long-term investment opportunities then, where would you have put your money?
Most of the investors would probably have been tempted to invest in the firms in the left column. Why?
Because, these firms had strong reputations, technological richness & deeper pockets. They could hire the most talented people in their industry, had sizable market shares
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• A sense of discovery – strategic intent is differentiated; it implies a competitively unique point of view about the future.
• A sense of destiny – Strategic intent has an emotional edge to it, it is a goal that employees perceive as inherently worthwhile.
Strategic architecture
A strategic architecture identifies what we must be doing right now to intercept the future. It is the essential link between today and tomorrow, between short term and long term. It shows the organization what competencies it must begin building right now, what new customer groups it must begin to understand, right now, what new channels it should be exploring, what new development priorities it should be pursuing right now to intercept the future.
Strategic architecture is a broad opportunity approach plan. The question addressed by a strategic architecture is not what we must do to maximize our revenues or share in an existing product market, but what must we do today in terms of competence acquisition, to prepare ourselves to capture a significant share of the future revenues in an emerging opportunity arena.
Strategy as Leverage
Stretch & Leverage are blood
Finarelli, M. (2009). Intended consequences: How changes during strategic planning can make or break a plan. Retrieved on October 10, 2011, from http://www.hss-inc.com/documents/SHSMD-MariaNovSpectrum.pdf
Arthur, A., Thompson, Margaret, A., Peteraf, John, E. Gamble, A., J., Strickland III. (2014). Crafting & Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage 19e: Concepts & Cases. C6-C25.
Strategic management is the ongoing process of ensuring a competitively superior fit between the organization and its ever-changing environment (Kreitner, G13). Strategic management serves as the competitive edge for the entire management process. It effectively blends strategic planning, implementation, and control. Organizations that are guided by a coherent strategic framework tend to execute even the smallest details of their mission in a coordinated fashion. The strategic management process includes the formulation of a strategy/strategic plans, implementation of the strategy, and strategic control. A clear statement of the organizational mission serves as the focal point for the entire planning process. People inside and outside the organization are given a general idea of why the organization exists and where it is headed. Working from the mission statement, management formulates the organization's strategy, a general explanation of how the organization's mission is to be accomplished. Then general intentions are translated into more concrete and measurable plans, policies, and budget allocations. Implementation is the most important part of the strategy. Strategic plans must be filtered down to lower levels to be success. Strategic plans can go astray, but a formal control system helps keep strategic plans on track. In the strategic management process general managers who adopt a strategic management perspective appreciate that strategic plans require updating and fine-tuning as conditions change. Given today's competitive pressures, management cannot afford to let strategic plans sit as is. A strategic orientation encourages farsightedness. Sun Microsystems Inc. is one company that developed a strategy to become the competitive leader and become the most reliable in the net business. I will explain how Sun's strategy integrates their marketing, management, technology, and service functions into one effective strategy. First I'll discuss who Sun is and what encouraged them to develop their strategy.
Strategic planning is a critical process for any successful business. It outlines the framework in which the organization operates. Therefore, each area of the process should be carefully considered and developed, with the understanding that some areas are relatively static, whereas other areas change and grow depending upon the environment. By far, the most important part of the strategic planning process is its implementation. If the process is never implemented, its development is just wasted energy.
Thompson, A. A., Strickland, A. J., & Gamble, J. E. (2008). Crafting & executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage (16th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
In other words, strategic objectives differ from goals/visions in terms of feasibility, practicality, and ultimately implementation. This theme makes its way into essentially every portion of the book, as it is vital to strategy. Often times, strategic planning and strategic thinking is thought to be any action performed by upper management. Rumelt debunks this myth and inserts that these executives are motivating and energizing their employees at best through vague visions and mission statements. Instead, upper-level management should actually focus on opportunities and detail orientated actions to avoid bad strategy. The same logic can be applied to hopeful wishes (over ambitious goals). These goals contain a great deal of uncertainty, as they lack a level of reality and planning. In fact, good strategy should be based off of an educated guess, even if that means you take a stance on an uncertain issue. Rumelt explains, “A new strategy is, in the language of science, a hypothesis, and its implementation is an experiment. As results appear, good leaders learn more about what does and doesn’t work and adjust their strategies accordingly” (Rumelt, 2011, pg. 241). In other words, successful strategists are constantly evaluating and adjusting their original hypothesis to perfect their strategy. This hypothesis allows them to
This strategy assumes that an articulated business strategy is the driver of both organizational design choices and the design of IT infrastructure. The alignment is said to be the most common and widely understood perspective, as it corresponds to the classic, hierarchical view of strategic management.
Thompson, A.A., Strickland, A.J., & Gamble, J. E. (2010). Crafting and executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage: Concepts and cases: 2009 custom edition (17th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill-Irwin
If asked what strategic planning is one could interpret it as simply a road map that can guide the organization in the right direction. It is very unlikely that an organization would know which direction to take without a sense of direction. Managers are faced every day with decisions that have a major impact on the direction the organization must take, therefore, strategic planning can play an important role in guiding managers in the right direction. In other words strategic planning is a tool that management can use to give them a sense of direction that will guide them in doing a better job and to ensure that all the members of the organization are working toward the same goals
Strategic planning has a focus on stabilizing the current environment, and it also support the organization's business plans and goals. Strategic planning helps to implement new projects, new technology, consolidation of data centers, data warehouses, exponential data growth, cost of ownership, and resources available in an organization to assess the future requirements. Strategic planning analyzes the business plan, potential blockage or other issues in the current architecture, processes and their implementation in new initiatives, and processes. Strategic planning helps to formulate the ideas about the key factors that are affecting the present and future development of the organization and the opportunities offered by the environment and the competence of the organization.
He believes that leaders and managers should be flexible with their strategies (McKeown, 2012). The author states that it is not always the best option to copy the competitor and his strategy. What is good for one business might not always be good for the other even if they are producing identical products. Lastly, the strategies can be changed. If a business person believes that a strategy constructed ten years ago is not conducive anymore then, it can be altered or completely changed according to where the business stands in the present.
...lopment industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses within the company. The Business Strategy should reflect the main issues that determine the long-term
Strategic planning is an organizational process in which it looks towards developing and sustaining success or balance in its ever changing environment.
Strategic Planning is looking at where you are now, knowing where you want to be in the future and planning the steps to get you there.
The primary motive for organizations to do strategic planning is to learn and to make decisions about the future of the organization based on that learning.