Strategic Lens Essay

There are a gazillion companies out there, but some stand out. Whether it is because of their popularity, affiliations, history, profile or service, one factor simply makes or breaks a company; it’s strategy management process.

ASOS is an international fashion retailer, which offers an extensive line of products, varying from high street to

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

Andrews, K., 2010. The Concept of Corporate Strategy, 3rd Edition. Financial Times Prentice Hall. [Accessed 13 April 2014]

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There has been a large amount of research into what strategy is, since Michael Porter’s perennial work in the 1980s. Studies done on the execution of strategy have been far less numerous. However, there is one major understanding about the execution of strategy. The execution of strategy is a vital part of success in business. A summary of many myths surrounding various strategic executions will be outlined, along with their subsequent analyses.

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).

“Strategy as Revolution” is also associated with a set of weaknesses that compromise the quality of the article. For instance, the author recommends top executives to gather the viewpoints of lower rank employees in terms of strategy formulation; however, Hamel (1996) fails to highlight the ways these viewpoints can be filtered taking into account the fact that there could be dozens if not hundred ideas and implementing all of them is not practical.

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.

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

Design school clearly separates formulation from implementation. Thus formulator has nothing to do with the implementation and implementers just have to follow the strategy given to them. CEO has already had problems of delegating responsibilities to staff. Hence even if good strategy is formed, poor implementation leads to failure of strategy. Design school encourages strategists to simplify the strategy which restricts their thinking and learning abilities. Thus design school gives a good framework for strategy building but fails to give the required path for success. (Ansoff, 1991)

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.

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

This essay will look at strategic management processes and how they can be used to improve organisational performance; it will also describe