Many directors and managers find their time completely occupied by fire-fighting’, dealing with the crises and problems that are occurring today, rather than considering what is necessary to ensure the survival and eventual success of the business. Corporate strategy is a flexible process which requires the time to think. The concept under analysis is a reality because business professionals have busy schedules and cannot afford the time to think about what can be and what should be.
Modern managers and leaders should not accept things as they are but to find effective solutions to improve performance and productivity. Before we can effectively respond to the future, we must anticipate it. For instance, environmental scanning is one of the principal ways to become alert to potential change, both external and internal. The mechanical part of this process is steps and methods used in the analysis, while analysis and evaluation steps require flexible thinking and reasoning. The scanning process involves identifying issues, trends, and events of possible importance through topical literature searches, internal staff meetings, panels of experts, consultants, and a variety of other sources (Clegg et al 2006). Once identified, the issues are classified and ranked in accordance with impact on the organization, timing, and probability of occurrence. Responses to issues range from implementing immediate action programs to simply monitoring the change for future developments. To manage strategically, it is crucial to find alternative state-of-the art solution to anticipate daily problems and business threats (Dobson and Starkey 2004).
The highly competitive nature of many markets and the likely future prospect of continued economic turbulence as national and global economic fortunes vary, requires that business managers continue to look for opportunities to improve performance (Dobson and Starkey 2004). This will primarily be achieved by improving effectiveness in the areas of winning/retaining customers, developing organizational competence and financial control. These success drivers are obvious but it is amazing how many businesses ignore their importance. This is particularly true in difficult markets or economic recession where short term financial constraints lead to cost cutting (Clegg et al 2006).
Time can be seen as a necessary luxury which helps managers to deal with complex problems and create a ‘strategic plans’. In general, strategy is the process of deciding how to best position the organization in its competitive environment in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage, profitably. Strategy cannot be seen as a mechanical process because of social and economic complexity of the modern world. Strategy is formed at both corporate level (what industries/markets should we operate in) and business unit level (in what segments should we compete — and how) (Pittengrew et al 2006). The process of strategic analysis is one of focusing down layer by layer’ to develop a clear understanding of the factors which effect the corporate and the market in which it operates. Ironically managers often also reduce the ability of the business to respond to and satisfy customer needs and expectations.
In practical terms the business has reduced its capability to win and retain customers at a time when there are fewer customers in the market and it is even more important to win the sale. Strategic management requires time to think crucial for analysis of economic, political, technical, social, and competitive forces which could influence the attainment of desired strategies and objectives. It requires the continuous scanning and monitoring of external conditions to answer the following questions: What are the key environmental issues? Which of these issues are favorable? Which are unfavorable? Should we ignore the issue, adapt to it, or attempt to favorably influence the outcome? What impact will these issues have on our mission, strategy, goals, and objectives? There are no ready made answers for these questions, so a manager needs time to think and evaluate alternative solutions and find a unique strategy for a problem occurred (Thompson 2004).
Strategic management should be used flexibly to reflect the nature of the relevant country/market environment. In this case, flexibility can be achieved by thinking and analysis. This means that for a large corporate, with a significant spread of operations, it is appropriate to separately map the different environments in which the various parts of the organization operate. The facts are normally identified by the senior management of the business from their personal knowledge and experience. Naturally this assumes that they have sufficient background in the environment to generate accurate data. If this experience does not exist external information sources would need to be used to supplement the existing knowledge of the business. Even where knowledge is strong’ it is prudent to validate key facts/assumptions and to compare alternative views of the future (Drejer, 2002).
Ideally, strategic management must focus individually on each alternative solution to define clearly targeted goals and actions. Strategic management is visionary and futuristic thinking. Strategic thinking requires time to balance between what is desired and what is possible. Organizations need to be aware of what is happening in their environment that might affect them. In other words, they should continually survey and monitor the outside as well as the inside of the organization.
Bibliography
Clegg, s., Kornberger, M., Pitsis.T. 2005, Managing and Organisations: an introduction to theory and practice, Sage, London.
Dobson, P., Starkey, K. 2004, The Strategic Management: Issues and Cases. Blackwell Publishing.
Drejer, A. 2002, Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Quorum Books.
Pittengrew, A. M., Thomas, H. Whittington, R. 2006, Handbook of Strategy and Management. Sage Publications.
Thompson, A.A., Strickland, A. J., Gamble, J E. 2004, Crafting & Executive Strategy. McGraw-Hill/Irwin; 14 edition.