Are you ready to access your readiness?

Is your business ready to take on the challenge of creating, planning, and implementing a strategy? You can determine your readiness by answering several questions. Think of this as a “readiness audit”.

1) Why are you thinking about strategy at this time? Is it for the right reasons?
2) Does your business have the right leaders?
3) Do you have a set of relevant guiding principles in place?
4) Are the right people in the right jobs?
5) Do any other current issues need to be addressed?
6) Do the key managers understand the need to think more strategically? Are they personally committed to making the effort?

Are you considering your strategy because, while moderately successful, you have a gnawing discomfort that things might be beginning to deteriorate? Or, do you aspire to move your business to the next level of size, profitability, or performance? Are you facing unprecedented competition?

You see, leaderships plays a major role in both creating and executing strategy. In fact, organizations seldom advance beyond the capability of their leaders. It is important to determine whether leaders throughout the organization are able and willing to commit to strategic management – especially those at the top.
An organization should have a vision, a mission, and a set of core values that are relevant to its current situation and embraced by its leaders. The strategy and plans will be built upon these principles.

The leader must get the right person in the right jobs and get rid of the wrong people. The right choice solve problems and get things done without burdening management. The wrong choice not only do not solve problems but also create additional problems and distractions.

If a business has substantial internal or operational problems, lacks a viable business model, or is not adequately capitalized, the managers should address these issues before taking on strategic management.
Understanding the commitment are necessary for success. Honest and realistic answers to the questions above will reveal whether your organization is ready to proceed.

Try this out:
Start by identifying the key leaders in the organization: Access their willingness and capabikities to participate in a strategic management process.

Ensure that you have a relevant set of guiding principles: They will be the foundation of all strategic decisions going forward.

Identify any current issues, including personnel, that must be resolved: Attend to them before attempting any meaningful strategy work.

Remember: you can only prep for so long; eventually you have to play the game.

Do not just follow the steps: follow the logic

The strategic management process helps you first to understand you business’s current situation and trends, next to determine a direction and desired state for the business, and finally to understand and identify what must be done to close the gap between the organizations’s current and desired positions.

Strategic management encompasses tasks listed as below, each building on that precedes it:

• Strategic Learning requires understanding the firm’s operations and results. Learning also requires that you continually scan the environment and process the relevant information. The goal is to acquire a profound knowledge of the business and the environment in which it is operating.

• Strategic Thinking is a creative and analytical activity that builds on the knowledge developed in the learning what you want to do in a strategic sense and the issues that must be addressed for success.

• Strategic Planning has the aim of determining how best to address strategic issues to achieve your strategic objectives.
  

• Strategic action involves the implementation and execution of the strategic plans. Strategic action should involve activity at all levels of the organization.

A diligent completion of the tasks and a willingness to learn – to see things in new ways – are prerequisites for an effective strategic management process.

You see, strategic thinking requires creativity which generates wide ranges of option to be considered. The more options you develop, the more likely you are to find the best one. Strategic thinking also encompasses a series of strategic choices that should be guided by the vision, mission, and values of the organization, including the following (at least):

- What business do you want to be in?

- In what direction do you want to take the business?

- What are the goals of the business?

- How are you going to compete?

- What functional strategies do you need to be successful?

The functional strategies involve creating competencies through out the organization to support the business strategy. The functions are generally considered to included marketing, production/operations, human resources, and finance. Detailed plans should be developed for various levels of the organization, all consistent with the articulated strategy.

Finally, the action phase of strategic management involves implementing the strategic plans. All members of the organization are involved in this phase of activity every day, whether mindful of it or not. As you develop your strategic management skills:

Keep in mind that the strategic management process is deceptively simple: Learn, think, plan, and do. The devil is in the implementation.

Develop a profound knowledge of your business and its environment: These initial steps of the strategic management process build a foundation for the subsequent ones.

Assess constantly throughout the strategic management process: Continually review you implementation choices for consistency and fit.

Continuous improvement is a requisite of competitiveness. Never let it rest. :)

Skip the strategy: Manage strategically

Many managers (be it project based – like you bloggers, human resources or even a GM) have a disdain for strategy and strategic planning, assuming that they are too theoretical for practical use. Every successful company, however, benefits from an effective strategy. The strategy might have been developed through formal analysis, trial and error, intuition, or just plainly luck. Regardless of its origin, a strategy was indeed executed, whether managers were aware of it or not.

If a business has an excellent strategy and effective implementation, it will likely be successful. If a company has a poor strategy, however, it is probably going to fail in the long run. But what if a firm has a strength formulation or its ability to implement, but not both? Have you come across about this?

We know that some business have exceptional strategies and succeed in spite of mediocre operations. For others, it does not matter how well they make or deliver their product because nobody wants it. Great implementation simply cannot compensate for a poor strategy. Having an effective strategy, though, is not necessarily more important than effective implementation. In the end, we must acknowledge that a company needs both to guarantee success.

Strategy is a long-term concept and, importantly, deals with change. The leader of a business, in seeking a prosperous future, must consider what might lie ahead and understand the driving forces of change and their likely impact on the business. Managers must determine which actions they should be taking now to prepare for what they expect in and desire for the future.

Tactics, in contrast, focus on the present. Tactics emphasize on taking actions to execute the strategy, such as meeting demand, satisfying customers needs and desires, improving efficiency, and controlling quality and costs so as to make a profit and meet other short-term goals (Organized work).

Evidence that a business’s current strategies and operations have been effective includes current profitability and positive trends. Management must continually question whether these current strategies will continue to be successful in the future. Although some strategies last a long time, successful strategies do not last forever. Environments evolve, competition intensifies, and requirements for leadership talent shirt according to time. Strategies must transform in response. It is a dynamic event.

Benefit from using the strategic management process to develop and implement strategies:

Use it to provide a framework: You can use the process to face and prepare for the future. It also required attention to the present and the short term horizon.

Let it guide you logically while requiring creativity: The process requires the team to generate ideas as well as consider the administrative details and functional activities that must be coordinated for successful strategy implementation.

Ensure that widespread participation, which culminates in decisive plans: As a result, the process improves communication, motivation, and execution.

Final say: Every activity should begin with a vision, purpose, goals, and objectives, These dreams are not likely to be realized without an effective strategy.

:)