John Kay's View Of Strategy

‘Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through it’

Strategy is a set of complicated tactics formulated by the executives of a company directed towards the achievement of company’s goal (Salmela, 2002). It is about all the path ways that a company would follow to reach its ultimate goal. It is a company’s strategy which helps to identify what it does better than the other companies in the industries, which may be different from what it does best. For successful strategy formulation and implementation, a company should know the needs of customers and should have knowledge of its competitors. Through a good strategy a company would identify that opportunity which makes it different from the others (Thompson, 2005).

When a business forms a strategy they are producing a large scale plan with plans to achieve one or more goals set by the business. The factors that affect the plan, in both negative and positive ways, are uncertain. So when making a strategic plan a business will have to take into account all factors and plan for them. Strategy is imperative for a business as not only does it give them a sense of direction and some goals to achieve, but also resources are usually limited so you have to a strategy will help to guide the business and make the best use of the resources that they have. Strategy give the business direction, it helps them to see whether they are over achieving/under achieving and meeting the goals they have set themselves. If a

“Strategy is the integrated set of choices that positions the business in its industry so as to generate superior financial returns over the long run.“ – Professor Jan W. Rivkin (lecture 1)

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

Strategy is more than mission and vision statements. Mission and vision statements do not offer the productive action or road map on how to achieve the desired

An organisation’s strategy plays an important role of providing direction of where company wants to be and how best to allocate the company’s resources to meet its objectives. The formulation of business strategies has evolved over the years and has been made more difficult in recent by the uncertain operating environments and global financial crises.

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Alfred Chandler(1963) defines strategy as ‘ the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals’. And Michael porter(1996) sees it as ‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’.

In the book “Good Strategy and Bad Strategy”, Richard Rumelt illustrates examples of success and failure of business management to explain the true meaning of the strategy, and tells companies how to develop a correct strategy and adhere to core of management strategy. He also emphasizes the central role of strategic management as to remind the readers to understand the huge difference between a good strategy and bad strategy. This book has three sections: good and bad strategy, sources of power, and thinking like a strategist. I will be evaluating strengths and weaknesses under these topics. After finish reading the book, I had gained a better understanding of what a good strategy means to the success of a company. According to Rumelt, a good strategy is coherent, where companies pursue multiple objectives that are connected with each other. Rumelt points out that a good strategy consists of three elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action. (71) First, diagnosis means to define the obstacles and challenges that the companies are facing, and guidelines help the people to overcome the obstacles. Lastly, coherent action is the activities or actions that company did to be consistent with its guiding policy. Today, many of us lost the focus of the strategy, which results in the downward of businesses and organizations. Rumelt has defined the strategy as acknowledging the main problems and take coherent action to overcome the problems. Moreover, he illustrates

A strategy is a plan which sets out how a business deploys its resources to achieve its goals. The company’s values set the tone for the decision-making process. The company’s ambition now is to go further and do even more to reduce and simplify prices, improve ranges, continue to innovate and deliver excellent customer service (Tesco, 2016). It set out a seven part strategy designed to achieve its goals of being highly valued by customers and enjoying strong long-term growth. The following are some of Tesco’s stated objectives:

The primary goal of strategy is to outline long term plans a company would undertake taking into consideration several factors which affect its business environment. It is in other words a broad-based formula for how a business is going to accomplish its mission, what its goals should be and what plans and policies will be needed to carry out those goals.

A strategy is said to be a plan that is made for the long term success of a product or brand. It is extremely important to have a strategy in order to figure out a direction towards which any company is able to focus all its resources efficiently and achieve desired outcomes. Formulating effective strategies is a considerably long process in itself that combines analysing several factors, situations and issues that are already present in a company and looking to improve on them alongside trying to implement various innovations and ideas to collectively create a direction towards which they can move and direct the resources available to them.

The concept of strategy is a fundamental issue for an organization. A successful organization mostly depends on how much good strategy they have. When there is good strategy, it can take the company to achieve its goal and vision quite smoothly. However, if there is bad strategy, the company can be in dangerous situation. Sometimes it can collapse as well. But good strategy is not only about vision and goals; it is a force of challenges that need to be achieved foe an organization. From Rumelt’s point of view, he mentions that Good strategy should be simply manages to meet the challenges an organization faces. It is not about achieving goals but moving the organization forward. Good strategy is all about implementing action plan to move forward in the most productive way possible.

Johnson, Wittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér (2014, p. 3) defines strategy as ‘the long-term direction of an organisation’.