Strategy Series: Strategy and the strategic management process

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”- Michael David Leonard Stack

This was a quote I first heard from my lecturer in school. A lot of business have good tactics in doing what they do well but however most do not succeed because they lack good overall strategy.

Strategy is a road map which a business or any entity choose to follow in achieving its goals and objective in a more effective and efficient manner. Strategy is more than just a business plan; strategy aligns every expect of a business to work in unity called synergy which brings about strategic fit.

For a business to come up with a bass ass strategy it has to consider the following steps. Which I am going to discuss briefly on to give you a quick insight now but in broad terms on other posts on the strategy series. They include the following.

Environmental Scanning
Strategic direction
Strategy formulation
Strategy implementation
Strategy evaluation and control

Environmental Scanning
First of all, what is the environment, basically its anything that can influence the activity of your entity, either directly or in directly. With this we can say that the business is the factors that can affect our business one way or the other. It may be customers, laws, competition, suppliers etc.

This is usually the first step in strategic management process. It is the process of analyzing the factors in your environment that can affect your business, this can help you see both opportunities and treats to your entity. When you know the opportunities and treats you can the formulate a good strategy to manage any scenario.

Strategic Direction
After you have done your analysis of the environment it is time to state clearly your strategic direction, which is basically your goal and objective also your vision and mission statements. Your goals and objective should have alignment (synergy) with your mission and vision statement.

Strategy Formulation
When you have a clear vision and mission statement as well as clear goals and objectives you can formulate a good strategy to bring them into reality with k tactical approach you know would work best. Strategy formulation is not as simple as I am trying to make it seem now, that’s why I would advise you look ahead for more future posts on the strategy series.

Strategy Implementation
When you have formulated a good strategy is time to put your strategy to work for you to get the result you have anticipated. It is not just enough to formulate a strategy, you must have the discipline and structure to carry out the “strategic plan”. To me a good strategy is worthless if it’s not being implemented.

Strategy Evaluation and Control
A strategy is not a decree! It should be flexible. When implementing a strategy measures should be made to measure if the strategy is doing or achieving what it’s supposed to be achieving. If it’s not there should be control measures in place to edit or even change the strategy to help you or your business achieve its goals and objectives.

I hope you have gotten a good introduction from this post on strategy. I would be posting more as I elaborate on the more strategic concepts.

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I am Ofomaja E. Joshua I talk Marketing, Business and Finance. Follow Me I promise I won’t waste your time.

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