Summary: Improving Team's Strategic Thinking

When working with companies, an employee has to wonder from time to time what makes management tick. What is the source of their decision-making practices? Why should people strategize in business or in war? Well first let’s define what is strategy? “It is a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world.” (dictionary.com, 2012) The main purpose of this article is to enhance our ability to think strategically. In addition, identifying how as managers and leaders of all organizational levels can

Strategic planning can make or break a company. Business owners need to make sure and focus on the plans being implemented for their business as they are the ones who will suffer the consequences if the plan does not succeed. When choosing who will be planning and making decisions for a company one must first make sure that the person being put in this position can come up solutions fast, does well under pressure, and most importantly someone who knows how to take criticism

Strategic thinking involves using ethical and moral reasoning to think about the future of an organization. This type of thinking usually starts about changes that you have noticed in the organizational climate, which are usually called mental models. Mental models are simplified understandings or representations of the phenomena that the organization encounters. These type of models can tell a strategic leader what is and is not important to the organization, what they do and do not like, what they should and should not notice. By knowing this, they include understandings of how things work and what are expected

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 all about the future and planning for things to come.  Or is it?  Well, I think it is more than that.  Strategy certainly has the future in mind but much of strategy is about executing a plan and the methods behind executing that as well.  It is about timing and controlling decisions to follow a plan at the right points.  The timing of strategic maneuvers is often the most important point of strategic plan and unfortunately, timing is also the thing that gets in the way the most of following a strategy successfully.  Things come up, issues occur, crisis hits and needs to be tended to, there just always seems to be another urgent thing requiring your attention and time before you can get to delivering on that strategy.

In Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, author Rich Horwath identifies that strategic thinking seizes to exist in most companies today. Horwath analyzes the significance of keenly utilizing scarce resources for survival— a skill critical in underwater diving, and operating a successful company in this day and age. Through his diving analogy, Horwath provides operative skills, principles, concepts, and methods— all of which must exist within a successful business to sustain its competitive advantage.

Strategic thinking is grounded in a strong understanding of the complex relationship between the organization and its environment. It requires taking a broad view, involving the right people, with important information and perspectives, asking probing questions and facilitating conversations. Strategic thinkers then identify connections, patterns and key issues (Forbes, The Three Strengths Of a True Strategic Leader, 2010/10/27).

Volumes have been written on the subject, which may in fact contribute to the difficulty of grasping the concept. One finds confusing and sometimes conflicting information on this blended concept that involves the vagaries of strategy and the behavioral art of leadership. Sometimes the methods and models used to explain it are more complicated than the concept and practice of strategic

Strategic planning compels businesses to be proactive than reactive in managing their future endeavor (David…). That makes business take initiatives and influence activities rather than just responding to activities- and thus to have control over its own destiny. Strategy improves decision making. It makes decision making simple by constraining the range of decision alternatives considered and also reduces the searched required to find an acceptable solution to decision problems. Strategy-making also pools and integrate the knowledge of different individuals. As a coordinating devise, strategy coordinates the actions of different organizational members. It is a communicating devise that communicates the identity, goals, and positioning of the company to all organization members. It is concerned not only with how the firm will compete now but also with what the firm will become in the future. It helps to establish a direction of the firm’s development and also the aspirations that can motivate and inspire members of the organization (Grant,

Strategy has been studied for years by business leaders and by business theorists. Yet, there is no definitive answer about what strategy really is.

Thru the course I have learned that Strategic Management builds on many processes and that various companies and organizations with diverse backgrounds can teach us valuable lessons. To be on the lookout for what can be considered a beneficial development in an organization or perhaps what can be a bad plan plausibly implemented at the wrong time.

I. Introduction: I choose this topic because Strategic Management is a way in which strategists set the objectives and proceed about attaining them. It deals with making and implementing decisions about future direction of an organization. It helps us to identify the direction in which an organization is moving. I believe that strategic management should be something that every business professional should seek to perfect in their day to day decision making.

* Sometimes when implementing strategy the CEO is not fully aware of the ground level realities of the organization. He may not be fully aware of the operational

An understanding of strategic thinking is vital in understanding Stacey’s contribution. The study of strategic thinking can be traced as far back as to the 1960s. Early scholars viewed the term as a method of generating creative thoughts today that will benefit the entire organization tomorrow. It involves forecasting and making quality assumptions. Furthermore, strategic thinking entails engaging the mind in the thought process, knowing what to do with the thoughts formulated and reviewing each action in cognizance with established rules for the benefit of the

​•  Strategic management starts with three key questions: (1) Where is the organization now?  (2) If no changes are made, where will the organization be in a few years?  (3)  If the answers are not acceptable, what specific actions should management undertake?