Strategic management: past experiences and future directions: Part 2

✍ Scribed by David Hussey

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 172 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1086-1718
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1697(199710)6:6<331::aid-jsc322>3.0.co;2-y

✦ Synopsis

Five critical components to successful strategic management are suggested: quality of analysis, creative strategic thinking, an appropriate process of strategic management which ®ts the situation of the organization, an obsession with implementation, and the competence and capabilities of the decision leaders. * Some ways are suggested to increase the prospects for strategic success.

* The quality of analysis, which for most businesses today requires dynamic rather than static approaches. * A creative dimension to strategic thinking. * The process and systems which affect how strategic decisions are taken and which are more situational than the earlier textbooks have implied. * An obsession with implementation, which becomes integrated into strategic decision making. * The competence and capabilities of the decision leaders.

De®ciencies in any of these components may have contributed to the situation I have described. There are four areas which derive from the critical components which may help us account for the failure of so many organizations to achieve the quality of strategic thinking that has been needed in the past, and which will be even more critical as we move into the next century. The areas are.

* Failure to analyse the situation before strategic decisions are made. * Failure to implement strategic decisions. * Problems with the process of planning itself. * Incomplete understanding of many of the concepts by those claiming to apply them.

Failure to analyse effectively

In theory analysis is an objective, rational process divorced from behavioural in¯uences.