Strategy
What is a Strategy?
There are numerous definitions of strategy and included among them are the following:
- A method or plan that is chosen to bring about a desired future, such as the achievement of a goal or a solution to a problem.
- The art and science of planning and marshalling resources for their most effective and efficient use.
- A high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.
- The means of determining the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, and how resources should be configured to meet the needs of markets and stakeholders.
- Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it is about choosing to be different. Strategy is about the definition and communication of an organization's unique position, and the determination of how organizational resources, skills, and competencies should be combined to create competitive advantage.
Source: Balanced Scorecard Institute
What is Strategic Thinking?
Strategic Thinking is a way of viewing challenges and opportunities from a variety of perspectives and altitudes, in order to proffer the very best solutions and directions. It is the habit of visualizing alternative futures for the organization and their impact on others. It’s not just a way of thinking what could be, but also a way of seeing what should be.
Strategic thinking has been said to involve five elements, namely: a systems perspective, a focus on intention, a focus on time, a focus on opportunity, and hypothesis testing.
Training and cultivating an organizational culture to think strategically is a vital tool throughout the strategic planning process. During the high-level strategy formation phase, leaders thinking strategically will drive alignment around analysing the opportunities from the widest possible perspective and understanding. During the operational and implementation phase, a strategic thinking organization will ensure that the higher level strategic direction cascades throughout the day-to-day decision making at all levels. Senior executives, middle managers, and front line staff are entrusted with the freedom to think through solutions and trade-offs, to ensure each decision is best aligned with the overall strategic direction. Finally, during the all-important evaluation and control phase, strategic thinking ensures that an organization is measuring those drivers which best lead to success of the overall mission.
What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful.
What is a Strategic Plan?
A strategic plan is a document used to communicate with the organization the organization’s goals, the actions needed to achieve those goals and all of the other critical elements developed during the planning exercise.
What is Strategic Management? What is Strategy Execution?
Strategic management is the set of decisions and actions that result in the formulation and implementation of plans designed to achieve an organisation’s objectives. It is the comprehensive collection of ongoing activities and processes that organizations use to systematically coordinate and align resources and actions with mission, vision and strategy throughout an organization. Strategic management activities transform the static plan into a system that provides strategic performance feedback for decision-making and enables the plan to evolve and grow as requirements and other circumstances change. Strategy Execution is basically synonymous with Strategy Management and amounts to the systematic implementation of a strategy.
What are the Steps in Strategic Planning and Management?
There are many different frameworks and methodologies for strategic planning and management. While there are no absolute rules regarding the right framework, most follow a similar pattern and have common attributes. Many frameworks cycle through a variation of some very basic phases:
- Analysis or assessment, where an understanding of the current internal and external environments is developed
- Strategy formulation, where high level strategy is developed and a basic organization level strategic plan is documented
- Strategy execution, where the high level plan is translated into more operational planning and action items, and
- Evaluation or sustainment/management phase, where ongoing refinement and evaluation of performance, culture, communications, data reporting, and other strategic management issues occurs.
What is a Planning Framework?
A framework is a broad overview, outline or skeleton of interlinked items which supports a particular approach to a specific objective in this case strategic planning.
A variety of analytical tools and techniques have been developed by companies and management consulting firms to help provide a framework for strategic planning. They include the PEST Analysis; Scenario Planning, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis; SWOT Analysis; Growth-share Matrix; the Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Maps; and the Nine Steps to Success.
What are the attributes of a good Planning Framework?
The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), has developed a Lead-Think-Plan-Actrubric and accompanying Body of Knowledge to capture and disseminate best practice in the field of strategic planning and management. ASP has also developed criteria for assessing strategic planning and management frameworks against the Body of Knowledge.
There are numerous strategic planning and management frameworks that meet these criteria.
Strategic Planning in the public sector in South Africa is guided by the National Treasury Framework for Strategic Plans and Annual Performance Plans of August 2010.
Services
Mzaidume Consulting has a wealth of expertise and experience in the development, implementation, monitoring and review of strategy.
[1] Balanced Scorecard Institute