The Effects Of A Conscious Strategy Using Examples Where Organisations That Engage Planning As A Deliberate Activity, Achieve Greater Success

How do we get there? (Strategy formulation – corporate level, business unit level, and functional level)

After nearly 40 years, the theory of business strategy is well developed and widely disseminated. Pioneering work by academics such as Michael E. Porter and Henry Mintzberg has established a rich literature on good strategy. Most senior executives have been trained in its principles, and large corporations have their own skilled strategy departments.

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.

Strategic planning is important for all businesses because this is when they set there aims and will discuss how they can achieve that aim. These aims have to be realistic and the owners will discuss this with their workers. Some aims might be hard to get but executives will want their workers to push hard so that it can be achieved. Marks and Spencer’s aim was to be the best supermarket in Britain but the recession had affected them really bad giving them losses of over 100 million pounds. Currently they are making profits of 50 million pounds but it is nowhere near what they made a few years ago.

For a goal-oriented person, a strategic plan can set direction and serves as a template for consistent decision making that moves the organization toward its envisioned future (Zuckerman, 2013). On the other hand, Zuckerman (2013), poses a different perspective that states that strategic planning may not be strategic after all, becomes as I explained before, it can become a checklist technique that lacks innovative practices. However, the outcome of the strategic planning process relates further to the mission and vision of those who are developing the strategies than in the planning within itself. Therefore, the reality is that strategic planning can be as straightforward and complex as an organization wants it to be. Therefore, if an organization envisions growth, the proposal needs to provoke that, and if a team is only planning to organize itself; then, the plan can be subtler. Therefore, organization can review plans as often as yearly and can last as long as five

In his article, “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” Henry Mintzberg (1994) provides his views on the process of strategic planning. He offers that most companies and organizations start a strategic planning process with little understanding of the definition or actual purpose of planning. He tends to admonish much of the conventional understanding concerning strategic planning and proposes his interpretations. He states that “the most successful strategies are visions, not plans” (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 107).

Without formal planning, a company might misunderstand its purpose, the focus of the business will be unclear to managers, and resources will wasted. “…the sum total of the organization’s effort might yield suboptimal results or outcomes or yield optimal results that do not directly or indirectly contribute to the organization’s purpose for existence” (Simerson, pg. 2). With this mind, it becomes clear why it is so important for businesses to come up with the right strategic plans, which lead to creating the right tactical plans, which lead to creating the right operational plans, so that the goals that have been set by the strategic plans can be

In order for a business or corporation to grow and expand at a calculated pace, they must be able to strategize the proper business plan to get there. A strategy is a set of analytic techniques for understanding and influencing the firm 's position in the marketplace (Raimundo, 2001). Having a business

According to Meyer, (2010), strategy is the action that company can take to achieve its desired goals. When it comes to a company, thinking can be said to be either long-term or short-term. When translated into action, it is what is called operations or projects. However there are differences between operations and

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.

In the past twenty give years there have been many changes in our world which have impacted business organizations, such as the rise of cell phones, the internet, and further globalization. Companies that have not be able to keep pace with the changes in technology, consumer taste, and marketing strategies have been relegated as dinosaurs and have destroyed themselves with this lack of adaptability. The need of an organization to conduct formal planning is widely accepted in today’s complex and rapidly changing environment and is a large factor in determining whether an organization will be successful (Khan & Khalique, 2014; Mehrabani & Mohamad, 2011; Fedrickson & Mitchell, 1984; Leontiades & Tezel, 1980). This has not necessarily been found to be true in historic application, as some studies have found that there is no strong association between corporate performance and whether that organization is a formal or informal planner (Miller & Cardinal, 1994; Leontiades & Tezel, 1980).

It is known that the ultimate purpose for a company is to set and achieve their business goals. A firm’s strategy is a plan that offers a number of guidelines for an organisation to achieve success by fulfilling their business goals (Cambridge Dictionary, 2016; Merriam-Webster, 2016). For example, it can identify a company’s capabilities, examine the changes in the market, and forecast the possible future of a company. As a result, having a strategy is one of the crucial elements for developing a business. Planning plays an important role in strategy (MacIntosh & Maclean, 2014). Strategic planning includes several analysis activities, for instance, industry analysis, value chain analysis, and stakeholder analysis. This essay will discuss my experience in doing strategic work. In this essay, it will first describe how and what my team members and I did on strategic planning, including our acquirements and the difficulties we faced during the group work. Next, it will be followed by my reflection of doing strategic work as a group compared to doing strategic work individually.

Every organisation must plan every action it intends to take, in the short-term as well as in the long-term. The company, on the basis of the objectives set by the top management of the organisation should plan for growth, expansion, restructuring of business or otherwise. Every company needs to plan out its strategies according to its future plans in order to avoid surprises and to overcome any challenges they may have to face. Therefore, without planning, the organisation cannot achieve any of its goals.

“A formalized procedure to produce an articulated result, in the form of an integrated system of decisions.” (1994, Mintzberg) Strategic planning is a core that leads to every successful business. It gives the direction of the business by creating the elements such as vision, mission, internal and external analyses. The goal is to define “where” that the business is heading to. In order to reach our aim of outstanding strategic planning, outside-of-box thinking, a solid construction of external, internal analysis and strategic management tools with supports from various professional views are compulsory.

Strategic planning is central to management study. It defines the long term direction for the company and all other business functions orbit around their established strategies. This article studies how a company formulates business-level strategies, optimize their competitive positioning and obtain a competitive advantage over their rivals.