Strategic management

Business Guide : Successful Manager / Strategic management

Strategic management

Strategic management is not a task, but a rather a set of managerial skills that should be used throughout the organization, in a wide variety of functions. Strategic cross-functional management is central to capitalizing on functional excellence, and in order for functional specialists to make the greatest possible contribution, managers must take a broader view of their functions and understand how they fit into the web of the organizational processes and, ultimately, into the overall strategy.

The ability to implement strategies is one of the most valuable of all managerial skills. Managers intent on implementing strategy must coordinate a broad range of interconnected efforts aimed at transforming intentions into action.

Overall purpose of strategic management process

The overall purpose of the experimental strategic learning and management process is to establish which strategic options or elements thereof are robust across the scenarios and use the most healthy elements to develop your strategic intent - your core strategic focus or theme.

Ten schools of strategic management

Ten deeply embedded, though quite narrow, concepts typically dominate current thinking on strategy. These range from the early Design and Planning schools to the more recent Learning, Cultural and Environmental Schools.

New systemic approach to strategic management

All the above schools, often fighting between themselves, favor different single-sided approaches to strategy formulation. They represent both different approaches to strategy formulation and different parts of the same process. Today's managers have to deal with the entire business systems – as opposed to dealing with its different parts independently - not only to keep strategy formulation as a vital force but also to impart real energy to the strategic process. They must practice balanced results-based leadership strategies and apply a balanced approach to business systems.

Certain positive moves in this direction have been seen recently. Some of the more recent approaches to strategy formulation take a wider perspective and cut across the above ten schools in eclectic and interesting ways, for example Learning and Design in the "Dynamic Capabilities" approach, or the "Dynamic Strategy" one based on knowledge working.

The currently dominant view of business strategy – resource-based theory – is based on the concept of economic rent and the view of the company as a collection of capabilities. This view of strategy has a coherence and integrative role that places it well ahead of other mechanisms of strategic decision making.

Working on your business

Most businesspeople are so busy working for their business or in their business that they never find time to work on their business. Thus they fail to anticipate what might happen or what they might be able to make happen. Unless you regularly schedule time (one-day out-of-the-office meeting a month at least) to work on your business and answer critical questions, you'll never achieve your stretch goals.

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Strategic cross-functional management

Peter Drucker likens today's executive and his or her strategic plan to the symphony conductor with a complex musical score to direct.5 The conductor cannot hope to play each instrument as well as the specialized symphony members can, and so those experts are left alone to perfect their individual contributions. However, the conductor interprets the score and communicates to the orchestra an overall vision for how the piece should sound. Without the conductor and this shared understanding of the score, symphony becomes cacophony. Similarly, without executive leadership and direction provided through some overall strategic plan, decentralization and self-direction result in organizational mayhem.

Strategic cross-functional management is central to capitalizing on functional excellence, and in order for functional specialists to make the greatest possible contribution, they must take a broader view of their functions and understand how they fit into the web of the organizational processes and, ultimately, into the overall strategy.